Was it worth it?

You’re welcome to go be a fan of only the team that wins every year. I’m not sure how much fun it will be reserving your fandom for the offseason (only after you know the “right” team to root for, since that team will have just won) but knock yourself out.

Clearly you’re missing the point.

Very much so is it worth it. I am very proud of being both a Bills and a Sabres fan with or without the titles. As for not having titles, that is obviously what we root for every year and optimistically we will get one. As far getting made fun of, who cares…I am there through thick and thin.

- The Bills won the AFC Championship ONE YEAR before the league merged and started calling it the Super Bowl.

- The 0-4 Super Bowl nightmare. A football sailing just 3 feet wide would forever haunt the city.

- Even the mighty French Connection couldn’t win it all.

- Probably the best pairing in NHL history, Mogilny and Lafontaine (& Hasek I think), couldn’t win it all in 93/94.

- The “hardest-working” 1999 team resulted in the heartbreaking “No Goal”, in brutal irony, to DALLAS, yet again.

- The 2005-06 team was the PERFECT Cinderella story, then got robbed by injuries and lost to a team with 3,000 unworthy bandwagon fans with just 18 minutes to go in game 7.

- The 2006-07 team was the greatest Sabres team of all time, but quit on eachother and lost to hated rival, Ottawa.

- The 2009-10 Sabres team blows a 13 point division lead with 2 months to go, only 10 points out of 9th spot.

Even after all that, we still come out and support them each and every game. At the Ralph, at HSBC. Its always rocking. Thats what its meant to be a Buffalo fan. Of course I would have loved to see a Superbowl or Cup by now, but honestly I wouldnt trade any of it. The ups and downs have made it fun, and depressing at the same time. We’ll get one one of these days, and when we do… It will all be worth it.

If I was dying and my grandson asked me about watching sports I would tell him to get a life. Watching sports is a pass-time, a hobby, a form of entertainment. Sure, its fine to be passionate about watching sports, but its not worth investing your entire life into. I want the Sabres to win the cup, but if they don’t life goes on just like every other year. I don’t feel like I wasted anything by rooting for a team that came up short. If I didn’t think it was worthwhile, I wouldn’t waste my time with it.

Thanks for understanding where my post was coming from and responding to it with a mature attitude, unlike the rest of these women who responded with hostility or took my comments completely out of context.

- Gotta love how twoeightnine can’t post a single response to any of my comments without being hostile. Maybe he needs to be on the “Prozac” he talked about, stop playing around with t-shirts and get a real job like the rest of us. “That team that blows” – Context my friend, context. “They’re tied with the defending Stanley Cup champions with a game in hand.” Yeah, where was Pittsburgh last year in January/February? And what’s this about the Caps?

“If I was dying and my grandson asked me about watching sports I would tell him to get a life.” – lassathrax Wow. (1) You clearly have a reading problem. (see: “My grandfather died late last year. Earlier that year ….. I asked him”) He passed away late in the year. When I asked him the question, it was earlier in the year. Get it? (2) So I’m spending time with my grandfather chatting about anything and everything including sports, I ask him if it was worth it being a fan of the Bills and Sabres after all these years and you think that he should have told me to get a life for asking that question? Get bent.

Ok, back to your response kry. “We can’t be loyal in tough times…” That was a little out of context as well. The full comment was: “…and look up at the rafters to remind ourselves that sometimes you fall short and other times you win it all.” I’m not suggesting we can’t be loyal in tough times, I’m not suggesting that at all. Almost the entire time has been tough. What I’m suggesting is that when times are tough, we don’t have Cup banner(s) hanging from the rafters to keep us level headed like a lot of other franchises do. Detroit has a bad season (and bad economy like us) but they can look up at the banners and shrug off a bad season like it’s nothing. We don’t have that luxury.

The Carolina comments, yeah, I hate the entire state. I lived in North Carolina during the Sabres amazing run in the 2006 Playoffs. I know a lot of people say the 07 team should’ve won it all, but there was just something about that 06 team…. it just feels like that was our shot. You couldn’t have scripted it any better. I feel like that team not going all the way somehow ripped a hole in the fabric of the universe or something because they were supposed to win it all. Like I said, it was the perfect Cinderella story. Nobody gave them a shot at finishing better than 25th, the “good days” of the franchise (97-2001) seemed to be over, everyone considers Buffalo a joke, everyone in NC took kidney jabs at me daily for being from Buffalo… and all of a sudden these guys flat out dominate everybody? It was vindicating! So when they lost to the Hurricanes while I lived there, it was a nightmare. Canes fans stomped on our throats and kicked us when we were down, it was a slaughter. My heart was already ripped out of my chest and then the Cup parade starts…. I won’t even lie, I moved away from North Carolina because I was so disgusted with the whole thing. As soon as I heard “Buffalo loses again, ha ha!” I felt a level of shame I’ve never felt in my life before. If you weren’t there at that time, as somebody from Buffalo, then you just can’t understand.

I disagree with your take on the Mogilny/Lafontaine pairing. You can’t go wrong with Pat. Too bad for those concussions though…. I thought Connolly would end the same way, but who knew he would come back, play every game and lead this team (and a large amount of the league) in points.

Now don’t get me wrong about the good times. I lived in several cities for awhile in order to “see the country”, as everybody should in their lifetime. In one of these cities I lived with a bunch of people from Buffalo. Well, we were watching the Sabres during the playoffs one year and they absolutely violated the other team, which happened to be the team from the city that I was living in at the time, and while we were high fiving each other we heard people through the walls of the apartment complex screaming in anger and breaking coffee tables, LOL! We took our license plates off our cars and took the bus to work for about two weeks, just to make sure our vehicles didn’t get vandalized.

Having said that, I stand by my statement that there still hasn’t been enough to outweigh what happened to me in NC, watching Brett Hull parade around HSBC, watching the Sens smile and giggle in HSBC after eliminating us, watching the Bills blow two MNF’s in front of the whole country to hated rivals, etc etc etc. I predicted the hostile, and frankly, hilarious comments that were posted in here as a response to my fan post, but what people don’t understand is that I would honestly sacrifice my life if it would get Buffalo a Super Bowl or Stanley Cup championship. If Gary Bettman came to my house today and said that he would fix the playoffs this year so Buffalo could win the Cup, but I would have to take a bullet in the heart as part of the deal…. I would do it. No doubt about it. I want to continue on with my career and travel and have kids and all that stuff, but I would sacrifice myself if it meant Buffalo could finally have a championship and remove the veil of shame. No hesitation.

What I’m saying is, after next year I’m closing a chapter. Contrary to the standard d-bag response of twoeightnine, the thought of being a fan of any other team has never crossed my mind. I’ve watched every game since 1995. After the Sabres 40th, I’ll end that. They call Buffalo “the most passionate fans in hockey”. When the Sabres lost in 99, I was in shock, my school work suffered. When Ottawa raped us in 07, my friends and I all took a week off from work. Hell, I moved away from North Carolina because of the 06 playoff loss. I’ll repeat that, I MOVED AWAY FROM A STATE BECAUSE OF A HOCKEY GAME. It doesn’t get any more passionate than that. Having said that, after the 40th I will retire as a fan. I’ll never root for another team. If they go to the Finals and win a Cup, I’ll be happy and hug some people in joy, but I won’t join the bandwagon and return the following year. I have one of the most difficult professions in business, but I swear, watching rival hockey teams and fans gloat just makes my skin crawl. One last season and I won’t have to see that anymore.

This kind of topic always drags out the extremists – there doesn’t seem to be any middle ground. While I absolutely disagree with what you’re saying about being a Buffalo sports fan, I appreciate the fact that it’s brought up a lot of excellent memories and stories to remind us of why we are Buffalo sports fans in the first place.

My theory on how to deal with all the pain and heartache (borrowed from Bill Simmons) is just knowing that our greatest sports moment is still ahead of us. Red Sox fans will never have another championship as sweet as 2007, and Saints fans will never have another moment that compares to 2009 – but us, our big moment is still somewhere out there. We still get to look forward to the privilege of one day experiencing that ultimate sports joy. And that’s what keeps me going.

I think I apply for the “middle ground”. I’m not calling for Ruff’s head, I’m not screaming out that the team sucks, I’m not being vulgar and I stand by my statements regardless of people like ‘twoeightnine’ predictably lashing out and/or taking things out of context. Like I said in one of the first posts I ever made here, you express any sort of opinion that goes against the grain and people want to crucify you. Unfortunately for them, I don’t turtle. Though I have noticed a number of people here actually have the brains and manners to respond intelligently.

Anyway, I was down at the Electric Building on Delaware for the New Years Eve celebration this year. Seeing so many people down there celebrating and the fireworks, I thought to myself, “This is exactly the same spot and this is exactly what it’s going to look like if the Sabres win the Cup. Only louder and with people crying in joy.” If it does end up happening, it will be the most appreciated championship in world sports history as well as the longest and happiest celebration.

You’re right about my comment, I read your post too quickly and got the wrong impression. I can be a d-bag sometimes. Still though, the rest of my comment stands. I can only invest so much in sports. When my team loses, I just move on.

Dude, this site is not about trying to “crucify” people for expressing opinions that go against the grain but if you’re going to say something that doesn’t make sense people are going to tell you it doesn’t make sense. Why would you go on a site featuring some of the most avid Sabres fans and say we should stop being fans? If you don’t want people to disagree with you – don’t post things that they’re obviously going to disagree with. There’s a difference between an opinion that goes against the grain (I think trading Roy would be a bad idea) and an “opinion” that doesn’t make sense (we should stop being fans because it isn’t worth it).

Show me an instance where someone from this board has “crucified” you about an opinion that wasn’t purposefully designed to draw ire and I’ll admit I was wrong. But until then, I think the people on this site are far nicer than you give them credit for. I think you’d know that if you weren’t just proliferating tension and drama.

I guess I try to look at this from a “martyr” type of view. I am in my mid 40’s and haven’t lived in Buffalo for 17 years. When people ask me “where are you from?” I still say I’m from Utica but originally from Buffalo. I will be a Bills and Sabres fan no matter what. No matter how bad we are. I guess it’s a loyalty thing. I’ve lived in a few other states myself. The year the Bills were 1 and 12 or something like that. I was in college. My roommate wanted to watch Miami, I said I’ll arm wrestle you for the tv. I won and the Bills won their only game that year against Dallas. I still get a sick feeling when someone mentions the name Steve Grogan or Brett Hull. I guess what I’m trying to say is be proud of the fact that you are a Buffalonian no matter what the teams do. I wish I had the time to get back there more often.