If I had a bookie, or any trust in the security of the online betting options out there, I would put down a few dollars on the Buffalo today.
As you might have heard, there was some pretty big news regarding the home team this week. The locals are generally riled up for the home opener, even during the most hopeless of times.
This year, the Bills and the visiting Dolphins are each 1-0 for the first real game at Ralph Wilson Stadium. A pre-game tribute to the only owner the franchise has ever known and the cancer-free return of its greatest quarterback were already planned before both Jon Bon Jovi and Donald Trump were eliminated from local football discussions. So things would have gotten pretty loud, anyway.
The news that Buffalo Sabres owners Terry and Kim Pegula will -- pending approval from the NFL next month -- become the second owners in the football team's 55-year history should inspire outright lunacy.
On paper (if anyone puts such things on paper any more), it's a pretty even match-up. The betting lines rate the game a toss-up, or at most, favor the Bills by a point.
Clearly, none of the oddsmakers have ever been present in Orchard Park for a game like this.
The sort of noise that will start sometime before 1 p.m. and, barring a complete Buffalo meltdown, will continue until around 4 p.m., makes it nearly impossible to focus, or even hear, for the visitors. Particularly if things go the home team's way early on.
I was sitting in the end zone during what may have been the most comparable previous situation, the AFC Championship Game against the Los Angeles Raiders on Jan. 20, 1991. A steady roar began well before kickoff, got more intense as the Bills raced out to a 21-3 lead after less than 12 minutes of game time and reached a crescendo when the teams left the field at halftime with the score 41-3, Buffalo.
It would end 51-3, but the rest barely seemed to matter, with much of the crowd occupying itself through the second half with festive songs about the imagined fetishes of Raiders quarterback Jay Schroeder, sung to the tune of "Camptown Races."
Of course, those Bills were at least a little better than this edition. But those Raiders were on a different level than these Dolphins, too, and they never had a chance. Barring a complete meltdown by E.J. Manuel, or someone spiking Buffalo's Gatorade buckets with a debilitating hallucinogenic, neither does Miami.
The decisive noise will be less an exhortation of the franchise's current players in a single game than a collective howl of relief, issued by about 70,000 people who have faced the prospect of losing their team since shortly after the annual Super Bowl trips ended.
Wilson's death in March at age 95 made possible the nightmare scenario for Bills fans -- billionaire vultures carrying the team off to a place where people who could not possibly care as much about it would pay twice as much for tickets, while the sort of huge corporations that abandoned the region decades ago bought up the high-priced luxury seating that the stadium that bears Wilson's name lacks.
The vultures did circle through the spring and summer. Bon Jovi's denials that he and his partners would move the Bills to Toronto at the first possible opportunity led to widespread hooting. Trump's bid was taken as seriously as his periodic threats to run for public office.
There is plenty to dislike about professional football at the moment, between the NFL's shameful handling of the Ray Rice case and other ongoing domestic violence cases, child-abuse charges against one of its biggest stars, and the latest grim news about the sport's long-term impact on the health of its players.
Locally, the jubilation surrounding the acceptance of the Pegulas' bid has largely drowned out questions about whether they will have more immediate success -- in terms of wins and losses -- than they have with the Sabres, or if it makes sense for the region to build a new stadium for $1 billion or more right after spending more than $100 million fixing up the old one.
For a few hours this afternoon, those problems and questions will wait. For most in the largely intoxicated gathering at Ralph Wilson Stadium, it will be too loud to think about much besides the game on the field.
And, if they were smart, collecting their winnings.
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