Why I Love July, Part One

on 07 19, 2010

It’s officially mid-July, which for a football fan means that excellent things are on the horizon: Training Camp and Fantasy Football.  Here we go, the first two part column of my Bareknucks career.  Today, we’re going to break down what is amazing about Training Camps with the Fantasy Football follow-up coming very soon after.

Okay, let me first start by saying I’m born and raised in Rochester, NY, which of course, is the unofficial home to the most embarrassing team in the NFL—the Buffalo Bills.  It pains me to write this, it really does.  But it’s true.  I mean let’s just take a look at our track record: we lost four straight Super Bowls, we were the guillotine to TO’s NFL career, we have an 91-year-old owner who actually looks older, and our biggest headline topic on SportsCenter was that we hired Chan Gailey as our brand new head coach.  And that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.  Trust me, I could go all day.  And eventually, the Bills will make me mad enough that I will write that column.  But I’m digressing.  I don’t even know what I’m trying to prove here.  I’m sorry.

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Training Camp, that’s the topic at hand.  What I was trying to say before my rant began was that, as an avid Bills fan, my Training Camp experience relies solely on what takes place at St. John Fisher College in Rochester.  And I will say, for all the mishaps the Bills seem to fall into, Training Camp is always a guaranteed wonderful time.

But why?  Why is that?  What makes Buffalo Bills Training Camp (or as I will now shorten to Bills Camp) so great?  I think that for great teams, the point of Camp is to watch your past winners stay current.  For hopeful, rebuilding teams with a bright future this season, it’s the chance to see what the hype is about—it’s about excitement and optimism.  But Bills Camp is none of those things.  The Bills didn’t win last year, they won’t win next year and they probably won’t win for the next five years (if we’re lucky).  But, watching a hopeful team isn’t what makes Bills Camp so great.  If I may, it’s more of a bonding session.

Let me use this metaphor.  Did you ever go on a camping trip when you were a kid?  Think about it: behind the fun of “roughing it,” behind the adventure and the stories, behind the idea of being horribly inconvenienced, camping actually sucks.  I mean, you go out into the dangerous woods, you get eaten alive by bugs, your food is tasteless, you have to shit on leaves, you stay up way too late and you get up way too early.  But somewhere in that awful experience, some part of it was fun enough for you not to regret the whole thing.

This is kind of what Bills Camp is like.

Bills Camp is an opportunity for Bills fans everywhere to come together and to witness first hand the sheer horrible play of the Buffalo Bills offense play the Buffalo Bills defense.  Sounds terrible, right?  Except the crucial detail: the Bills fans are together.  Together we sit, watching our team stink up the practice facility.  We gripe and moan and complain and bitch.  But, then we turn back to the field, only to be disgusted again.  It’s a vicious cycle.

And then, after it’s over, the players sign autographs and chat with us.  It’s great to know that even the team is in on this horrible camping trip.  They might not technically be sleeping in the tent with us, but they did bring the s’mores.  It’s the least they could do.

Bills Camp starts July 29th at 3:00.  I wouldn’t miss it for the world.  I know that what I’ll be witnessing on that day will not be pretty.  It will not look like good football.  It certainly won’t get me geared up to watch the regular season.  But, I’ll be there.

In some twisted way, Bills Camp is better than the Bills regular season.  During Camp, us fans can whine and complain.  But somewhere, deep down, there is a small piece of hope.  It’s small and it’s very hard to find, but it exists.  That small piece will be ripped out, only to be thrown into the air by Trent Edwards and intercepted by a Patriots corner.  But, until then, it will remain in the pit of our stomachs.

I love the Bills so much.  I love being a fan.  I love the support group that comes to every Bills-related event.  I love being able to tip my Bills hat to an out-of-state fan when I go back to school in the fall.  It’s what makes Camp so wonderful.  It’s while I’ll always go back.

* Tune in for Why I Love July, Part 2 in the coming days.

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