As the Buffalo Bills prepare to take on the Miami Dolphins today at Ralph Wilson Stadium, my mind goes back to a time when this rivalry reached a fevered pitch that finally exploded on a beautiful summer day in 1980.

Most Buffalo Bills fans will tell you that the one team they love to beat is the Miami Dolphins. Some will tell you that they don’t care if the Bills lose all their games just as long as they “squish the fish”.  So why is there such a frenzy over this one team in the NFL? For those fans that are too young to remember, here’s a little refresher course.

When I was drafted by the Bills in 1979, I didn’t understand this rabid desire to beat the Dolphins.  It didn’t take me long to understand why the fans and the players hated the Dolphins beyond all comprehension.  All I had to do was look at the history of the games between these two teams. The Bills had lost a record 18 straight games to the Dolphins. Many of the games came right down to the wire, but the Bills would always seem to find a way to lose in breathtaking fashion.  Was Buffalo was jinxed, or was there something bigger than that going on here?

My rookie season we played the Dolphins in the home opener in Buffalo and as fate would have it, we lost a heartbreaking game when our kicker, Tom Dempsey missed a last second field. It was my first taste of this ongoing battle between the forces of good and evil. The joke around the NFL was that he missed it by half a foot. If you remember, Tom had a congenital deformity that left him with a club foot. He used that same foot to set the NFL record for the longest field – 63 yards. Later that year we played the Dolphins in Miami and lost again.  On that day, the Buffalo Bills set what is still the longest losing streak (Team vs Team) in the history of the NFL; 20 games.  Even though we lost, I felt pretty good about my own performance in that Game. I Intercepted Bob Griese in the end zone near the end of the game.

The sun may have shined on me that day, but it still didn’t help us overcome the diabolical plans and designs of those in higher places.

The entire off-season, all I heard from fans was “why can’t you guys beat the Dolphins?” After hearing this countless times, I made it my goal to do everything in my power to end this streak once and for all.  When the league schedule came out, I circled the date on my calendar, September 7, 1980. The home opener, again, in Buffalo.  In the lead up to the game, there were rumors floating around that there was an NFL conspiracy to make sure the Bills always lost to the Dolphins. If you ever saw the Movie version of the X files you might remember a scene in the movie where “The Smoking Man” tells the illuminate that the Buffalo Bills will never win a Superbowl.  It was kind of like that, only ten-fold. There were tales of voodoo rituals in South Florida to help the Dolphins, séances in Buffalo where they called up the spirits of dead players from the championship years ‘64 and ‘’65 to help the Bills win. Fans would offer me good luck artifacts and others would tell me they would pray for our team. I never could understand why fans would think God liked one team over another. When players tell everyone, after a game, that they just want to thank the Lord for being with them that day, does that mean he wasn’t with the other team that day? It all seemed a little foolish to me, but I would always say thank you to the fan that was offering up their prayers. Maybe God was treating Buffalo the same way he treated Job back in the Old Testament and he just wanted to see if we would eventually curse him for not letting our team win.

What I’ve come to realize, since making Buffalo my home, is that there are many reasons we love to hate the Miami Dolphins. Most of it has to do with what is known as the “green monster” or jealousy. The Miami Dolphins have been the signature franchise of South Florida sports for 42 years. The Dolphins have played in five Super Bowls. They won Super Bowls VII and VIII. The first Super Bowl victory completed the 1972 perfect season at 17-0, the only one in NFL history.  On the other side of the coin, we have been to 4 straight Superbowls and lost each and every one of them. It was a great accomplishment to get to the big dance, but was there something unseen that was keeping us from achieving the ultimate prize?

Every year we get to witness the spectacle of undefeated teams trying to win all their games and match the record of the ’72 Dolphins. The New England Patriots have came the closest and this year the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts will once again wet our appetite, only to let us down in the final few games of the season as they bench their starters in order to keep them healthy for the playoffs.

Envy and hatred are sins so maybe we are being punished by God because we hate their team and we envy their weather!  More Buffalonians retire to the sunny climate of Florida than any other state in the union, which, by the way, makes being a Bills fan even more difficult.  There are more “Bills Backers” organizations in Florida than anywhere else. This is rather strange because when the Dolphins play in Buffalo, the fans here pray for bad weather in the hopes that it will affect the Dolphin players that are used to the sunshine and palm trees.

Where else in the world do people actually pray for bad weather? Does God really care about the weather conditions in Buffalo when the Dolphins play here? When was the last time it snowed really bad before or during the game? With everyone praying so hard you would think God would at least give us few feet of snow once in a while. Does God hate the Bills?

There is a quote from the bible that gives all a little relief and reminds us to be patient. “God will not tempt you above that which ye are able”.  In other words, he knows our breaking point and he won’t let us get to it, and just like Job, he finally answered our prayer’s  back in 1980 and he let us win. Personally speaking,  I would like to think that the months of our hard work and preparation had something to do with it. I had my best game ever, intercepting three passes and recovering a fumble. Here’s a clip of Bryant Gumble talking about me back when he was sporting an afro:

For players like Joe Delamiellure, Reggie McKenzie and Joe Ferguson, who had endured the entire ten years of defeat at the hands of the Dolphins, their emotions had to be something like the Jews experienced when they were finally allowed to go into the promised land after 40 years of wandering in the desert. Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. For those of you who believe in a higher power, (and believe me, I do)

I hope I have not offended you with this obvious tongue-in-cheek look at the way we interject God into sports.

September 7, 1980 was  “A Day That The Lord Hath Made, so be glad” …whether you’re a Bills fan or a Dolphins fan.

He shined on the Buffalo Bills that day……but he really loves us all equally!