Destiny Is Calling Me

Bills coach Joe Brady watches as Josh Allen is about to score the first touchdown at the new Highmark Stadium against the Detroit Lions in the stadium’s first game on Thursday night, September 17, 2026. Photo by Chris Carosa

For as long as I can remember, my brother and I wanted to go to a Buffalo Bills game. We couldn’t go. It was to

o expensive.

My parents went once during the Bills’ AFL Championship season. We couldn’t go. It was just for adults. We stayed home with the babysitter, my great great aunt (that’s not a typo, she was my grandmother’s aunt).

Every week, we’d listen to the game on the radio. Those were the days of “blackouts.” Back then, local television often couldn’t show the games. So the radio was the only choice. My father, my brother, and I. No matter where we were.

We’d listen in the car on a radio that had only the AM band. We’d listen in the spare room on a radio embedded in the Show and Tell. My mother would serve the three of us little sandwiches to make the event a special family event. We’d listen outside on a portable radio while my father laid bricks for a raised flower bed at my great aunt’s house (that would be my mother’s aunt).

I remember that last one. The Bills beat the Jets. It was 1968. That was their only win that season. But they beat the eventual Super Bowl champs.

What I don’t remember is when we first asked our father if we could go to a game.

“Someday,” he promised. “When you boys are older.”

My brother and I wondered when we’d be older.

Then, one day in early 1973, my father finally sprang the question on us. “Boys, do you want to go to a Bills game?”

Maybe we jumped for joy, maybe we didn’t. Whatever happened physically, in our heads we were doing cartwheels.

Now we just had to choose a game.

That was the first year of Rich Stadium. Dad said we had to go to a preseason game because those tickets cost the least. Not the first game, though. Everyone wanted to go to the first game. That would be the first preseason game. Against the Washington Redskins. No way we could afford to go to that game. Just as well. The Bills lost (I know, I know, it’s preseason, who cares? We did.)

So it was the second game, against the Oakland Raiders, that became our coming-of-age event. There’s nothing like a father taking his sons to their first NFL game. The Bills lost. Who cares? We didn’t. We were there. That’s what mattered.

The Bills didn’t win a game the entire preseason. They ended up 9-5 for the season, finishing second in their division and just missing the playoffs. Did we care? Sort of. But there was something more important about that season that defined the Buffalo Bills during that era.

In 1973, the Buffalo Bills did something no NFL team had ever done. They set a record for most rushing yards, led by their star running back O.J. Simpson. What’s more, he became the first NFL player to rush for over 2,000 yards. We watched it happen. Live on TV. (It was an away game against the Jets.) From my aunt’s apartment (that would be my father’s sister).

“The Juice,” as O.J. was called, gave us a chance to start “talkin’ proud” about the Bills years before Buffalo’s “Talkin’ Proud” campaign officially began in 1980. O.J. allowed my father’s generation to forget Cookie Gilchrist and forgive Lou Saban for trading him. He gave my brother and me—and our entire generation—someone to cheer for during the doldrums of Bills football in the 1970s.

O.J.’s success also gave Buffalo’s working-class community a group of peers to watch earn respect throughout the NFL. That would be the offensive line, a unit professional football typically ignored. They gained fame by opening holes for O.J. to slice through. Simpson acknowledged the “Electric Company” (so-called because they made the Juice run) at every opportunity.

It’s hard to explain. Every time O.J. touched the ball, your adrenaline rushed. There was a real chance he’d sprint 80 yards for a touchdown. It wasn’t just his speed; it was his moves. He’d twist and turn in impossible ways, causing defenders to miss. In hockey, they call it “deking.” It happens more often than not in hockey. In football, especially at the professional level, it almost never happens. Yet, O.J. did it every time he touched the ball.

If you weren’t watching it live as it happened, you’ll never know the feeling. Replays don’t evoke the same sense. It’s close, but not quite, the same feeling you get when you see Josh Allen break out of the pocket and begin his non-scripted moves. You never know how far Josh will run. It was the same with O.J.

I especially feel sorry for those who didn’t witness the magic of 1973 and can’t separate the artist from the art. Maybe it’s just another one of those things only true Bills fans understand.

But enough dwelling in the past. The future is now, and it began last week in Orchard Park at New Highmark Stadium. With the ruins of old Rich Stadium reduced to a pile of rubble on the other side of Abbott Road, the Bills began their new era (yes, pun intended) in dramatic fashion.

And I was there.

Alas, Dad wasn’t, but his grandkids were. Alas, Kenny wasn’t, but his kids were.

And maybe that’s the most important part of the story.

The future belongs to the generations. The best we can do is to ensure we show the way. That we help them stay on the tracks the past has built. That they know it’s their job to build those tracks ahead.

The right of way has been cleared and leveled.

But that’s not all. Not only do they need to lay track on the ground we’ve prepared.

They also must extend that path for the future they have yet to produce.

Dad showed us the way.

Destiny called me and Kenny.

Now it’s calling them.