BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — The Bills have played in six AFC Championship games so far, four of them winners and two losers. Winning gets you to the Super Bowl. Losing sends you on that long ride home. I’ve covered both. Here are some vintage memories.
On Saturday, Jan. 7, 1989, News 4 Anchor Rich Newberg began a Saturday night newscast with video of amped-up Bills fans arriving aboard a bus in the city of Cincinnati, host of the AFC Championship game.
“The Buffalo blizzard has whipped its way into Cincinnati,” he said, “and the Bills’ 12th man hopes to leave the Bengals snowbound.”
That January, 36 years ago, only a small blizzard of Bills fans could get tickets to the ‘Rumble in the Jungle,’ the AFC Championship game in Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium that pitted the Bills against the Bengals. It was a first for the Bills and I was sent to cover the fans at the game.
Back then, Donna Helmer, a Bills fan from Amherst, told me, “We have been nonstop, I mean high energy because we’re gonna do it. We’re gonna make it No. 1 — the Bills!”
On the field, the Bengals, under head coach Sam Wyche, forced three interceptions from the Bills led by quarterback Jim Kelly and coached by Marv Levy. In the stands, the hearty Bills fans played tough but were woefully outmanned.
From his seat in the stadium, Bills fan Moe Naylon said, “That’s OK. We’re delighted to be in the jungle. We’re on a safari!”
A few hundred fans had snagged tickets with bus tours and partied the night before the game in Cincinnati, eating wings they thought had been soaking in tomato soup!
“We want Buffalo wings,” they pleaded with a smile, while waving the dripping wings across the soup. “Boo!”
Soupy and sad, as I reported back then. The Bills’ first real Super Bowl dreams were drowned in a 21-10 drubbing by the Bengals that day in 1989. The party on the field belonged to the Bengals.
But what a difference two years later when the AFC Championship brought the Los Angeles Raiders to Rich Stadium. This time, Jim Kelly led his talented teammates to their first Super Bowl with the largest margin of victory in AFC Championship history, 51-3. Fandemonium ruled!
That included transplanted Bills fans who lived in Tampa, which was the Super Bowl city in 1991.
Anticipating the Bills victory, News 4 sent me with a crew to Florida so we could watch the AFC Championship game on television with fans living there who grew up with the Bills in their blood.
We checked in at a local Tampa bar called New York, New York. When I asked bar patrons watching the game where they were from, their answers made me smile.
“I’m from Grand Island, New York, from North Tonawanda, New York and Niagara Falls, New York, I’m originally from Cheektowaga, New York, from Orchard Park, New York.”
No one could predict that the AFC victory we watched on January 20, 1991, would lead to an unprecedented four consecutive Super Bowls for the Bills. None of them were winners, but each one brought thrills and mighty memories to Bills fans.
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Jacquie Walker is an award-winning anchor and reporter who has been part of the News 4 team since 1983. See more of her work here.