As James Cook somersaulted into what I later learned was a 25-yard touchdown, fans packed inside Southern Tier Brewing Co. at Canalside erupted into cheers and hollers.
As difficult as this may be for members of Bills Mafia and even casual football fans to understand, I am far from the only person living in Western New York who not only didn’t know how to complete the sentence “The Bills make me wanna … “ but could watch an entire Bills game and have no clue what is happening.
I, like thousands of recent immigrants to the United States who call Buffalo home, am not from here. I spent the first 22 years of my life in my hometown of Kolkata, India, population 15 million. For many of us, football bears no resemblance to the game you all watch every week from September to February.
But it didn’t take long to understand the hold the Bills have on you and that even if we wanted to, resistance is futile.
Jack Harry Elder, an exchange student at the University at Buffalo, originally from northern Scotland and a law student at the University of Glasgow, echoed my sentiments. After he moved to Buffalo in August, he kept seeing signs by the road that said “Allen Diggs.”
“I had no idea what it meant,” he said. “I thought it was like a wall for something. I started passing more and more to the point where I’m like, ‘OK, why is this?’ and then I had it explained to me.”
But learning the identities of two of the most well-known Buffalo Bills – first names Josh and Stefon – was just the beginning for Elder.
“I don’t know how much I’d have gotten into American football if it wasn’t for Buffalo,” he said, while sporting his Josh Allen jersey. “And going to Buffalo and not getting into the football is like going to Scotland and not trying haggis. It’s something you just got to do.”
His experience reminded me of the first time I drove from New York City into Buffalo. I had been in the country for only a…
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