NFL: "People live and die by the Bills"

[buffalobillsfootball]

NFL: "People live and die by the Bills"

 

Posted: August 11, 2008, 8:11 PM by Sean Fitz-Gerald

 

Football, GTA, NFL

 

It was already raining heavily, with darker clouds on the horizon, as the Buffalo Bills worked through the middle of their evening practice. Players and coaches had to stay and contend with the weather because of the value assigned to every nanosecond of an NFL training camp, but almost everyone else was free to go.

 

Yet they did not.

 

Thousands of fans remained moored to the grandstand at St. John Fisher College in Pittsford, N.Y., watching the team move through the mundane to the mildly intriguing bits of practice on Monday. Several hundred more milled about the promenade, which was stocked with concession stands and attractions, like a carnival.

 

Speculation has swirled around the Bills and their future in New York for years, and especially now, in light of the eight-game trial balloon set to begin this Thursday in Toronto. But the fans have not wavered.

 

Last month, the team announced it had sold 54,200 season tickets, the third-highest total in franchise history. Buffalo's record of 57,132 was set in 1992, the year after its first of four consecutive trips to the Super Bowl

 

"The Bills are like the heart of the city," receiver Lee Evans said. "People live and die by the Bills."

 

The training camp, just outside of Rochester, features private reception tents and VIP areas. Hot dogs and hamburgers are sold at the End Zone Grill, near a booth selling fried dough and funnel cakes.

 

Two police officers surveyed the scene on horseback Monday night, across the parking lot from a white tent the size of a rural Canadian hockey rink. Dozens of fans milled about inside, picking over a field of merchandise and subscription offers from the local newspaper.

 

"[The Bills] mean an awful lot," former Erie County executive Dennis Gorski has said. "We're not Toronto, New York, Chicago or Montreal. We're, by numbers, relatively small. We're considered a small-market community, and the Buffalo Bills have been the only way in many instances that we've been able to compete with the glitzy communities."