NFL Players Have Warmed Up to Buffalo

For refusing to sign a contract, or fouling up generally, players faced standard punishment in the National Football League.

They were threatened with exile to Buffalo.

Nor was the image of Buffalo heightened when O.J. Simpson, serving a term there, informed management that unless he was transferred to Los Angeles, to be close to his wife and children, he was bidding football bon voyage.

“Why don’t you move your wife and children to Buffalo?” he was asked.

The question was so preposterous, O.J. wouldn’t dignify it with an answer.

Eventually, he arranged a trade to San Francisco, where, free at last, he kneeled and kissed Market Street.

Faced with the realization of the Bills taking him in a supplemental draft, Bernie Kosar announced he would not play in Buffalo. He preferred a place with more panache.

He went to Cleveland.

The Browns settled the matter with the Bills by sending them all-pro linebacker Chip Banks. Only Banks said he would play in Atlanta before he would play in Buffalo.

Reflecting on conditions such as the foregoing, the owner of the Bills, Ralph Wilson, can’t understand why players wouldn’t report to the garden city of Buffalo.

“Certainly, we have no problem signing them today,” he says. “Lesser cities have trouble signing players, but we don’t have any.”

“How do you explain this cultural turnabout?” he is asked.

“Players are recognizing the many beauties of the town,” he answers. “They also are getting a lot of money.”

Whatever the motivation, it is an unvarnished truth that Buffalo is putting on the field today one of the best teams in the American Conference.

It could even be a Super Bowl team, if it clears matters with the Raiders and Miami. Buffalo never has advanced to a Super Bowl.

“But then there have been only 24 opportunities in the past,” he says. “I have a lot of time. I’m only 72. But actually it’s bad luck even to talk about the Super Bowl. All I know is, we won’t lose a chance at it because players refuse to come to Buffalo.”

The first time around, Jim Kelly rejected Buffalo, choosing to play, instead, for the distinguished Houston Gamblers, in the USFL.

It wasn’t until the Gamblers entered into rest that Kelly shifted to Buffalo, where he would link up with such first-quality players as Bruce Smith, Cornelius Bennett, Shane Conlan, Thurman Thomas and Andre Reed.

“When things are going well, they come in bunches,” says Wilson. “The Raiders asked waivers on James Lofton, who is 34. We picked him up. What an asset to our club! And we got him for nothing.”

The Bills have developed a reputation as a bickering troupe, which the owner acknowledges.

“But bickering can’t always be taken seriously,” he says. “Friends bicker. Married people bicker. I mean, who bickers more than football owners? If you want to witness bickering, go to a league meeting some time.”

Bickering at owners’ meetings even has led to knuckles, not to mention refined exchanges, such as the day Tony Morabito, late owner of San Francisco, disagreed with a presentation of George Preston Marshall, late owner of Washington.

“Marshall, you nauseate me,” said Morabito in the presence of the group.

Marshall wasn’t offended. All he did was call Morabito a “waterfront wop.”

“Now that’s bickering,” says Wilson. “What my players do is small-time.”

A roughhouse team, playing in a town where guys at the bar rate a boilermaker an aperitif, the Bills are led, curiously, by a Phi Beta Kappa, with a master’s degree from Harvard in English history, Marv Levy.

A reader of classic literature, raised in an affluent environment, Levy used to coach Country Day School of St. Louis, where players were dropped off in station wagons by the family chauffeur.

In Buffalo, of course, Marv’s players are dropped off by their mothers, with instructions to stay clean.

But the rise in football society of the Bills has hurt other ownerships, now hard-pressed to intimidate wayward sons.

If shipping one to Buffalo no longer is a viable threat, where does a team go to restore order?