Buffalo Bills fans leave Bills Stadium as a mascot waves a flag after an NFL divisional round football game against the Baltimore Ravens on Jan. 16, 2021, in Orchard Park, N.Y.
Adrian Kraus/The Associated Press
On Saturday morning, Terry and Kim Pegula will board the Bills’ charter flight to Kansas City, he with lucky socks and her with cookies she baked for players and coaches. This has become a routine for the couple who own Buffalo’s beloved football franchise.
Terry has worn the same argyle socks every game day since Nov. 29 and since then the Bills have won eight straight. Kim started baking on Sunday mornings to burn off nervous energy, posting pictures on social media. Since this is Buffalo, hundreds of others began to do the same, sending her photos of their own pregame Oreo truffles, Snickerdoodles and white chocolate blondies.
This is something you have to understand about Bills fans. There is almost nothing they won’t do to celebrate their team, even leaping onto flaming folding tables after drinking too much beer.
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The devotion is born from a few things. Buffalo exudes the closeness of a small town, and is also a place where sports teams have mostly failed. The Bills last won a league championship in 1965 when they were in the old American Football League. Does that count? The Sabres have been in the NHL a half-century but haven’t won a Stanley Cup. Buffalo was also home to an NBA team that never won there or in the other two cities to which it has moved.
So it is understandable that the city and the NFL team’s followers – they call themselves the Bills Mafia – are delirious. With a victory over Kansas City on Sunday night, they will be the nearest they have been to winning a Super Bowl since January, 1994, when they lost a fourth consecutive NFL championship game. Most infamously when the field-goal kicker missed what would have been the game-winner with eight seconds left.
Buffalo Bills fans celebrate a touchdown during a game against the New York Jets, in Clarence, N.Y., on Sept. 13, 2020.
Libby March/The New York Times News Service
The Pegulas, who also own the Sabres, two professional lacrosse teams and an American Hockey League franchise, have lived in Buffalo since 1993 and bought the Bills in October, 2014. Kim was installed as their president.
“When you own a team, there is no manual,” she says cheerfully. “What we were taking on was completely unknown. We owned the Sabres, but with the NFL we were elevated to such a bigger stage.”
The season had already begun, so for the first year she went to games and tried to learn the inner workings of the league. She has since taken a more active approach, even sitting in on the pre-draft interview the team conducted with its star quarterback, Josh Allen.
Ms. Pegula has spent the past two weeks making plans in the event the Bills reach the Super Bowl. It has heightened her anxiety. All she wants is for Sunday’s game to be over, and for the city to be rocking afterward.
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The Bills Mafia formed in 2011, when three friends started a fan club as a joke. There are legions of followers now, but since this is Buffalo, they are no ordinary fans.
When quarterback Josh Allen’s grandmother died late last year, they raised $675,000 and donated it to a children’s hospital in her name. A week ago, when Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson suffered a concussion during a loss to the Bills, one Mafia member started a movement to donate to a charity of Jackson’s choice. Almost $500,000 has already been raised.
Dan Kanopski, the fellow who chipped in the first $25, says if he hadn’t done it someone else would have. He lives in Niagara Falls, and lost his job last year as part of the fallout from COVID-19.
“For the last year, the shining light for me has been the Bills,” Kanopski says.
Win or lose, Bills fans are irrepressible. Wolf Blitzer, the CNN anchor, grew up in Buffalo. On Jan. 6, the night of the elections in Georgia, he opened a segment with, “This just in. Go Bills!” Last week, he appeared on a Buffalo sports radio talk show and talked about the perils of being a fan.
“We have known some winning, but we have known a lot of losing, too,” he said.
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Dan Mitchell grew up Buffalo, but has lived in Myrtle Beach, S.C., the past 26 years. He recalls having his heart ripped out by the Bills when he was a kid. And later as an adult, too.
Last year after a few drinks he started a Bills fan podcast that now has more than 11,000 subscribers.
“No matter how hard the Bills are performing, my PTSD from them kicks in and I wonder when everything is going to go down the drain,” he says. “This is the culmination of everything I wanted this team to be. It’s a swan song of my fantasy.”
Greg Tranter was eight years old when he went to his first Bills game on Oct. 24, 1965. As he and his father watched from Row 28 in Section 14 at War Memorial Stadium, Jack Kemp threw two touchdowns and Wray Carlton ran for two others in a 31-13 romp over the Denver Broncos.
Buffalo Bills program.
Courtesy of Buffalo History Museum
The youngster went home with a bobblehead and a program that day, his romance with the team under way. He is 64 now and has been a Bills season-ticket holder since 1984, even though he’s lived in Boston the past 35 years.
In that time he’s missed three home games – one when his mother had cancer surgery, another when his wife had pneumonia, and the last for an important business meeting.
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A former insurance executive, Tranter donated more than 100,000 Bills artifacts he had collected since childhood to the Buffalo History Museum, for which he serves as president of the board of managers. An appraiser estimated the items’ combined value at more than US$1-million.
It includes the bobblehead and $4.50 ticket stub from that first game, the helmet that Scott Norwood wore when he missed the 47-yard field goal that would have won Super Bowl XXV, a box of Doug Flutie Flakes, a garden gnome, hand puppets, a snow blower and lapel pins shaped like footballs that Secret Service agents wore during the 1996 presidential campaign while protecting Kemp, the vice-presidential nominee to Robert Dole.
Tranter has programs from every Bills game played dating from their inaugural campaign in 1960 in the AFL and says he caused a ruckus watching from home this season as the Bills won 15 of 18 games.
“I am so excited, I am just blown away,” he says.
Tranter has been to every Bills Super Bowl, and he and three friends have tickets to the game on Feb. 7 in Tampa.They bought them early, without knowing if the Bills will be there, just in case.
If the Bills lose on Sunday, Tranter says he will probably sell his ticket, which cost him upward of US$7,000. The matchup he dreams about is Buffalo against Tampa Bay.
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“If we beat Tom Brady, it would make up for 20 years of misery,” Tranter says.
TORONTO – Singles star Leylah Fernandez and doubles specialist Gabriela Dabrowski will anchor Canada’s five-player lineup when the team tries to defend its Billie Jean King Cup title in mid-November.
The 26th-ranked Fernandez, the 2021 U.S. Open finalist from Laval, Que., is the lone Canadian in the top 100 of the WTA Tour’s singles rankings.
Dabrowski, from Ottawa, is ranked fourth on the doubles list. The 2023 U.S. Open women’s doubles champion won mixed doubles bronze with Felix Auger-Aliassime at the recent Paris Olympics.
Marina Stakusic of Mississauga, Ont., returns after a breakout performance last year, capped by her singles win in Canada’s 2-0 victory over Italy in the final. Vancouver’s Rebecca Marino is also back and Bianca Andreescu, the 2019 U.S. Open champion from Mississauga, Ont., returns to the squad for the first time since 2022.
“Winning the Billie Jean King Cup in 2023 was a dream come true for us, and not only that, but I feel like we made a statement to the world about the strength of this nation when it comes to tennis,” Canada captain Heidi El Tabakh said Monday in a release. “Once again, we have a very strong team this year with Bianca joining Leylah, Gaby, Rebecca and Marina, making it an extremely powerful team that is more than capable of going all the way.
“At the end of the day, our goal is to make Canada proud, and we’ll do our best to bring the same level of effort and excitement that we had in last year’s finals.”
Fernandez, who beat Jasmine Paolini to clinch Canada’s first-ever title at the competition, is ranked No. 42 in doubles.
Canada, which received an automatic berth as defending champion, will play the winner of the first-round tie between Great Britain and Germany on Nov. 17 at Malaga’s Martin Carpena Arena.
Australia, Italy and wild-card entry Czechia also received first-round byes. The tournament, which continues through Nov. 20, also includes host Spain, Slovakia, the United States, Poland, Japan and Romania.
Stakusic is up 27 spots to No. 128 in the latest world singles rankings. Marino is at No. 134 and Andreescu, the 2019 U.S. Open champion, is ranked 167th.
Canada will look to become the first team since Czechia in 2016 to successfully defend its Billie Jean King Cup title.
Malaga will also host the Nov. 19-24 Davis Cup Final 8. The Canadian men qualified over the weekend with a 2-1 victory over Great Britain in Manchester.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
PITTSBURGH – Sidney Crosby plans to remain a Pittsburgh Penguin for at least three more years.
The Penguins announced on Monday that they re-signed the 37-year-old from Cole Harbour, N.S., to a two-year contract extension that has an average annual value of US$8.7 million. The deal runs through the 2026-27 season.
Crosby was eligible to sign an extension on July 1 with him entering the final season of a 12-year, $104.4-million deal that carries an $8.7-million salary cap hit.
At the NHL/NHLPA player media tour in Las Vegas last Monday, he said things were positive and he was optimistic about a deal getting done.
The three-time Stanley Cup champion is coming off a 42-goal, 94-point campaign that saw him finish tied for 12th in the league scoring race.
Crosby has spent all 19 of his NHL seasons in Pittsburgh, amassing 592 goals and 1,004 assists in 1,272 career games.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Tadej Pogacar was so dominant on Sunday, Canada’s Michael Woods called it a race for second.
Pogacar, a three-time Tour de France champion from Slovenia, pedalled to a resounding victory at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montreal.
The UAE Team Emirates leader crossed the finish line 24 seconds ahead of Spain’s Pello Bilbao of Bahrain — Victorious to win the demanding 209.1-kilometre race on a sunny, 28 C day in Montreal. France’s Julian Alaphilippe of Soudal Quick-Step was third.
“He’s the greatest rider of all time, he’s a formidable opponent,” said Woods, who finished 45 seconds behind the leader in eighth. “If you’re not at your very, very best, then you can forget racing with him, and today was kind of representative of that.
“He’s at such a different level that if you follow him, it can be lights out.”
Pogacar slowed down before the last turn to celebrate with the crowd, high-five fans on Avenue du Parc and cruise past the finish line with his arms in the air after more than five hours on the bike.
The 25-year-old joined Belgium’s Greg Van Avermaet as the only multi-time winners in Montreal after claiming the race in 2022. He also redeemed a seventh-place finish at the Quebec City Grand Prix on Friday.
“I was disappointed, because I had such good legs that I didn’t do better than seventh,” Pogacar said. “To bounce back after seventh to victory here, it’s just an incredible feeling.”
It’s Pogacar’s latest win in a dominant year that includes victories at the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia.
Ottawa’s Woods (Israel Premier-Tech) tied a career-best in front of the home crowd in Montreal, but hoped for more after claiming a stage at the Spanish Vuelta two weeks ago.
“I wanted a better result,” the 37-year-old rider said. “My goal was a podium, but at the same time I’m happy with the performance. In bike racing, you can’t always get the result you want and I felt like I raced really well, I animated the race, I felt like I was up there.”
Pogacar completed the 17 climbs up and down Mount Royal near downtown in five hours 28 minutes 15 seconds.
He made his move with 23.3 kilometres to go, leaving the peloton in his dust as he pedalled into the lead — one he never relinquished.
Bilbao, Alaphilippe, Alex Aranburu (Movistar Team) and Bart Lemmen (Visma–Lease) chased in a group behind him, with Bilbao ultimately separating himself from the pack. But he never came close to catching Pogacar, who built a 35-second lead with one lap left to go.
“It was still a really hard race today, but the team was on point,” Pogacar said. “We did really how we planned, and the race situation was good for us. We make it hard in the last final laps, and they set me up for a (takeover) two laps to go, and it was all perfect.”
Ottawa’s Derek Gee, who placed ninth in this year’s Tour de France, finished 48th in Montreal, and called it a “hard day” in the heat.
“I think everyone knows when you see Tadej on the start line that it’s just going to be full gas,” Gee said.
Israel Premier-Tech teammate Hugo Houle of Sainte-Perpétue, Que., was 51st.
Houle said he heard Pogacar inform his teammates on the radio that he was ready to attack with two laps left in the race.
“I said then, well, clearly it’s over for me,” Houle said. “You see, cycling isn’t that complicated.”
Australia’s Michael Matthews won the Quebec City GP for a record third time on Friday, but did not finish in Montreal. The two races are the only North American events on the UCI World Tour.
Michael Leonard of Oakville, Ont., and Gil Gelders and Dries De Bondt of Belgium broke away from the peloton during the second lap. Leonard led the majority of the race before losing pace with 45 kilometres to go.
Only 89 of 169 riders from 24 teams — including the Canadian national team — completed the gruelling race that features 4,573 metres in total altitude.
Next up, the riders will head to the world championships in Zurich, Switzerland from Sept. 21 to 29.
Pogacar will try to join Eddy Merckx (1974) and Stephen Roche (1987) as the only men to win three major titles in a season — known as the Triple Crown.
“Today gave me a lot of confidence, motivation,” Pogacar said. “I think we are ready for world championships.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 15, 2024.
