For recent arrivals to Buffalo, the Bills started as a curiosity. But the passion found them

They were excited.

I was confused.

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 year and I remember being puzzled by the buffalo sculptures of varying sizes and the familiar red and blue adorning scores of houses. That evening, as I walked along Chippewa Street, hunting for wings and pizza, someone saw me in similar colors and shouted, “Go Bills!”

If not for my friends who told me to get a good winter jacket and to be sure I learned everything I could about our NFL franchise, my response to that statement probably would have been “Who’s Bills? And go where?”

Like Elder, 23-year-old Shabab Khan had never been to Buffalo before he came here for school. He came from Bangladesh to study computer science at SUNY Erie Community College. As we chatted in Bengali, he told me how he has always been a fan of both cricket and football – the one Americans call “soccer.” But those passions pale in comparison to what he has found here.

“I was so surprised by it when I first came here,” he said. “But now I understand how much it means to the community.”

Elder said it’s not just that so many people have a common rooting interest, he said. The fan base that has come to be known as “Bills Mafia” has welcomed him as if he has been following the teams since the days of Jack Kemp and Cookie Gilchrist.

“They don’t exclude anyone. It doesn’t matter where you’re from. I mean, I’m from Scotland. I’ve just come over here. I’ve been accepted into that. That feels great to me. So yeah, it’s beautiful,” Elder agreed.

I found myself at the West Side Bazaar on Thursday where I met legendary Bills linebacker Darryl Talley, who I now know played on all four of the Bills’ Super Bowl teams and who, in the excitement following the Bills AFC East championship in 1988, coined the term “fandemonium.” As he towered over me and later graciously posed for a photo, crouching next to me, I could not get his words out of my head. I had asked him to explain what the Bills fan base means.

After he thought for a moment, he said: “It’s hard to put into words what they mean to the team. The Bills fans are part of what the team is built on. The team draws energy from the fans – you walk onto the field and feel it ... the hair on your arms stands up.”

He could not emphasize enough how tight knit the Buffalo community is and how much passion a simple “Go Bills!” can incite.

“You go anywhere in the world, and you’ll find someone from 716 that’s a Bills fan,” he laughed.

Kara Houseknecht, a store owner who was present at the Bazaar, told me that her grandfather had been a season ticket owner since 1971. Houseknecht recalls the family receiving a phone call about his absence at the games following his death in 2010.

I asked her what the Bills meant to her.

“It means family, it means fun, it gives a reason for people to get together,” she said.

I understand a little better now, but I feel like there is one thing missing that will fully initiate me into being a Bills fan. So if you see a short person bundled up and taking notes, that will be me, experiencing my first Buffalo Bills tailgate.

If you do, I have just one more question: Why exactly do you jump through tables?