Town of Tonawanda native Lindsay Jimenez, who has lived in Southern California since 2004, brings back Anchor Bar sauce whenever she visits home and uses it to make chicken wing dip for football watch parties. Her husband and his friends have come to call it "Jim Kelly sauce" as her Bills fandom rubs off on them.
Barry Tower, who grew up in the City of Tonawanda but moved to the Kansas City area about 50 years ago, proudly flies a Bills flag outside his home, annoying a neighbor to the point he put out a Chiefs flag in retaliation.
And when Rochester native K.J. Banach moved to Denver two years ago, he found and made fast friends in the Colorado Bills Backers club, one of the largest in the country, which now rents out a warehouse for socially distanced viewing of Bills games.
"It's more of a family, in a way, than it is just being a sports fan. The love of the camaraderie from everybody," Banach said Friday. "I mean, I'm getting goosebumps just talking to you about it."
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It's not just local fans savoring this magical season that has the Bills entering Sunday's AFC Championship Game one win away from their first trip to the Super Bowl in 27 years.
Western New York expatriates, who embraced the team while growing up or going to college here, continue to cheer on their favorite team from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
They can find it lonely rooting on the Bills in enemy territory but they seek out fellow fans or turn to social media to recapture a shared experience from a distance.
That's a challenge even in Buffalo, given the health and safety restrictions in place because of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the Bills' gallop through the playoffs has given fans everywhere reason to celebrate during this difficult period.
"I think we always have looked forward to Bills weekends, right? But maybe never quite as much as we have this year. And for good reason," Nellie Drew, director of the University at Buffalo's Center for the Advancement of Sport, said in an interview that began with her asking how many hours remained until Sunday's kickoff.
No matter how long they lived in Western New York, or how long they've been gone, expats share a common theme of working to preserve ties to their beloved Bills. "It's a connection with home," Drew said.
Here are a few of their stories.
From Rochester to Denver
Banach describes himself as a Bills fan "born and raised" whose first game, at 6 years old, was a January 1991 Bills-Miami Dolphins divisional playoff game.
"Every time I played Pop Warner I was No. 34," Banach said. "I just thought Thurman Thomas was the best."
Banach had season tickets before handing over the seats to an acquaintance after the hiring of "buffoon" Rex Ryan as head coach annoyed him.
He moved to Denver two years ago and immediately found the local Bills Backers. Their watch parties draw huge crowds as well as former Bills such as Stevie Johnson and John Fina.
Banach had tickets to the Bills game in Denver last month but, one week beforehand, public officials barred fans from the stadium because of rising Covid-19 rates.
He's flying out to Kansas City Saturday for the Chiefs game and he's got something special planned if the Bills win the big game. He and some buddies want to hike up to Colorado's highest peak, Mount Elbert, and wave a Bills flag there.
"The Bills are on top of the world and so are we," said Banach, who survived the latter part of the Bills' playoff drought thanks to his girlfriend, a therapist.
Hooked as a UB student
When Allison Behan came to UB in fall 1992 from her Capital District home, one of the first things she did to jump into the local culture was attend a Bills game.
"I'd never seen so many adults that excited about anything," Behan said. "I thought this was great."
Allison Behan, who became a Bills fan while attending UB in the 1990s, remains a die-hard supporter from her home in the Albany suburbs.
Behan moved to Chicago and then back home but still supports the Bills.
"I couldn't bear to root for anyone else, even though I didn't live in the 716 anymore," Behan said.
She's watched a game, pre-pandemic, at the raucous Bills Backers bar in downtown Albany, McGeary's. Her son got a Josh Allen jersey for Christmas and she's finally worn down her soccer-loving husband.
"Matt doesn't even watch football but I think he's sick of me talking about it so he's on board now," Behan said.
Bills fan in SoCal
Jimenez remembers how fellow students and teachers at Kenmore West High School would show off their Bills spirit during the franchise's early 1990s string of Super Bowl appearances. She attended the Bills' 51-3 trouncing of the Los Angeles Raiders in the AFC Championship Game 30 years ago this week.
"I remember going with my dad and bundling up in tons of layers and still freezing," she said.
Lindsay Jimenez, far right, is a Town of Tonawanda native and Bills fan living in Southern California. Her husband, Manuel, in the cheese head, is a Green Bay Packers fan whose team could meet the Bills in the Super Bowl.
Now living in the sprawling Los Angeles suburbs, Jimenez said a season like this makes her miss Buffalo more. Her father ships out gear such as Bills Mafia sweatshirts, so that helps, but she hopes once the pandemic eases to take her husband, Manuel, to a Bills home game.
Manuel Jimenez grew up in Los Angeles and became a Green Bay Packers fan because of former quarterback Brett Favre. There's a chance his Packers could meet her Bills in Super Bowl LV.
"It's going to be tense," Lindsay Jimenez said with a laugh.
Tonawanda wings in KC
Tower moved to the Kansas City area for college in the late 1960s and never left. He maintained his Bills fandom and raised his three sons to support his hometown team, too.
Tower's son Grant opened a sports bar, Taps on Main, about two years ago. "He asked me to teach him how to make wings," Barry Tower said.
The elder Tower cooks wings using a recipe he got decades ago from a bar in North Tonawanda and tweaked here and there.
They're dubbed Tonawanda wings and the bar has some trappings of home, including an aerial photo of the City of Tonawanda.
"He didn't want to make it a full Bills bar because he didn't want to alienate the Chiefs fans," Tower said, laughing. "I understand."
He said "it's awful, it's horrendous" as a Bills fan in Chiefs country and he knows what to expect when he wears his team face mask in public.
"Some guy (Thursday) said, 'Hey, thanks for coming to our city' – he didn't know I was a resident – 'and we're going to kick your'" posterior, Tower said.
Expat relies on Bills Twitter
James Kurdziel works in the radio industry and moved from his native South Buffalo to Minneapolis last June to take a new job in the same network of stations.
A lifelong fan, he started searching out Bills Backers bars but they were all shut down this season. "I guess one of them's a bowling alley, which is the most Buffalo thing ever," Kurdziel said.
The success of the team this year and the constant team chatter on Twitter and social media has helped ease the transition to living in a new city, he said.
"I feel like it would have been far more lonely, otherwise, because you can always hop on and talk about the Bills and it doesn't matter where you are," Kurdziel said.
Still, there are times he knows he's missing out as a fan of the red, white and blue living in a sea of Minnesota Vikings purple, as was the case last Saturday night after the Bills beat the Baltimore Ravens.
"Driving around furiously hitting my horn to the tune of “LET’S GO BUFF-A-LO” and it’s just not getting the responses I hoped it would in downtown Minneapolis," he tweeted then.
