Published: November 19, 2008 01:32 am      

DUVALL: Another one down the drain

Were you ready for some football? Lord knows I was Monday night. Unfortunately I didn’t see much worth watching.

Oh, the Bills. They sure can lose ’em, huh?

No Xs, Os or breakdowns of failed plays here — see the sports section for that. I’m just going to write like the frustrated fan I am.

These last two weeks I’ve actually uttered something I never thought I would: Let some other city have this joke of a team. I say this not because I hate the Bills. Quite the contrary: the constant and predictable failures are becoming too frustrating to watch.

I’m approaching my breaking point with this franchise. I don’t know how many more games like Monday’s debacle against the Browns I can take. I get far angrier watching Bills football than anything else in my week. I’m a rather hot-tempered individual by nature, but the Bills have the unique ability to tick me off more than anything else.

I turn into a child throwing a temper-tantrum. I stomp, curse, pace, yell at a television set. When things get really bad on the field things within easy reach tend to go airborne. Remote controls, pillows — those are potential projectiles when the Bills are losing.

I take this a little more seriously than I probably should.

My father, a usual game-watching companion, is far less impulsive or emotional. He’s been through more of this than I have. He remembers decades of futility. He sat in the end-zone section of a stadium in Tampa when a certain 47-yard field goal sailed wide right. I was a child and any reaction to that heartbreaking loss hasn’t registered in my adult understanding of sports.

I suppose once you’ve seen, in person, the worst loss from the best losing team in sports, everything else is easier to take.

Of course, if the Bills ever won a Super Bowl I’d be an hysterical, sobbing mess. At least I assume I would be — though the more I think about it the more I wonder if I’ll get the chance to find out.

Has it come to this? Are the Bills really hopeless? Is this a lost cause, a team destined to find new and ever-more wrenching ways to lose?

This season offered so much promise. It began with a startling four-game win streak. A young quarterback looked like the guy who would lead us out of the wilderness of professional football and over that final hill to the place where other cities and fans call home. One where the reigning emotion isn’t cynicism, where fans look forward to big games and hope their team will win. Unlike Buffalo, where we hope they’ll win, but expect they’ll lose with a remarkable dramatic flair.

There’s a sad irony, even in those distant memories of the Super Bowl years. The knowledge that even our best players — who were certainly great — are remembered not for their many successes, but their ultimate failures.

Jim Kelly was a loser. Thurman Thomas: loser. Bruce Smith, Andre Reed: losers. Steve Tasker: a loser with bonus loser points for becoming a lousy broadcaster. Marv Levy: Leader of the losers. Of course they’re our losers and we love them just the same. But if you’ve never won the big game, well we know what that makes you.

These were my boyhood heroes. Larger than life, but all-too-lifelike standing on the sidelines holding hands as Scott Norwood’s kick missed its mark. Then there was that overweight obstinate jerk Bill Parcells’ stomach flopping all over the place while he celebrated our misfortune. At least that’s how I remember it ...

So there they were again Monday night, in front of the whole country, with yet another season circling the drain, but still just 47 yards from redemption.

And there we were, a city watching, hoping just this once to get it right. Instead, we got it wide right. Again.

It’s days like this I hate how much I love that damned team.

Managing Editor Eric DuVall’s column appears every Wednesday and Sunday. Contact him at 693-1000, ext. 112 or by e-mail to duvalle@gnnewspaper.com.