SEAN MCGRATH
Sports Editor
Being a Fredonian, snow is almost commonplace; the same can be said for Buffalo. Notorious for heavy snow, Buffalo is usually victim to lake effect. On average, we in Buffalo usually see between 9-10 feet of snowfall in the 3-4 months that are considered the winter months on campus.
That number will forever be changed; the snow was so bad that both the Buffalo Sabres and Buffalo Bills delayed/postponed games due to the weather.
It’s rare that snowfall would shut down a city. But that rarity was reality two weeks ago, as many students know. It’s uncommon that we have snow days. Yes, President Virginia Horvath has cancelled classes before, but not like this. Usually, classes after 5 p.m. have been cancelled due to darkness and fear of roads becoming more and more treacherous — but never a whole day of classes.
Yet, that still happened. Tuesday, classes after 1 p.m. were cancelled, and then both Wednesday and Thursday were completely cancelled.
But this white-out was Western New York-wide. The entire I-90 was shut down from Pennsylvania to Henrietta, far past what is the norm when it comes to lake effect snow.
The Sabres, battling with hard scheduling conflicts, were able to rotate a few games. The Sabres will now face the New York Rangers in Buffalo on February 20, 2015. The Ottawa Senators game, scheduled for that night, has now been scheduled earlier, playing on December 15, 2014.
But the real story came from the Ralph Wilson Stadium.
A roofless stadium blasted with snow makes for one unhappy situation, especially with the New York Jets coming into town that Sunday.
With warnings to the NFL from Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, the NFL was in a hard spot.
What is the best option? Do we wait out the storm and hope for the best?
To start, the Buffalo Bills organization called on its Mafia.
Though controversial at the start, the Bills offered people who came to shovel the Ralph a pretty decent trade. For $10 and free Bills tickets, would you have taken the deal? Some signed up, others were gearing up to battle the snow.
However, Mother Nature had other plans. For four days, she huffed and puffed and blew snow in, rendering the Ralph near useless. No amount of labor could unbury the stadium, and the Bills, along with the NFL, were back to square one.
Enter, Detroit Lions.
This time, they weren’t an opponent. In this time of need, the NFL decided to move the game against the Jets into a neutral location — Detroit’s Ford Field.
In the land of Lions and laser pointers, the Bills found “home,” sorta.
The kicker, you ask? The Detroit Lions organization offered fans a location so the game could play on, for free.
Yep, if you were set to be in Buffalo, your ticket counted in Detroit. However, the NFL also came up with the decision that if you wanted to see them play, you could do so for no cost besides gas money, food and maybe hotel.
A lot of friends of mine jumped onto the Detroit Lions’ website Saturday morning and reserved or attempted to reserve tickets. Those who got them packed carfuls donned in their red, white and blue and drove the four and a half hours through Canada, or five and a half down the I-90, just recently opened the Sunday before.
The Bill’s didn’t get their Monday Night Football game originally, but they did now.
Additionally, the Detroit Lions offered a 50/50 drawing, with proceeds going to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.
Suited for 65,000 and extendable to 70,000, nobody expected 62,000 Bills and Jets fans to flock to Detroit. The majority were covered in red, white and blue.
To paraphrase a Field of Dreams quote, “If you host it, they will come,” is an understatement, which goes to show the passion that I, and the rest of the Mafia have for our Buffalo Bills. The field was completely converted. Two big, bold BILLS titled each endzone, and a charging buffalo adorned the middle of the field. It may not be home, but it was close to it. The facilities were of total use to both teams, which was crucial for the Bills to get whatever practices or workouts they needed.
Head coach Doug Marrone and the entire Bills organization couldn’t have pulled this off without the great help of the Lions organization.
In a story of tragedy, with 13 lives lost in the storm, Buffalo now knows that it can count on its fanbase and football to find a silver lining. That lining was a 38-3 Bills victory.
Thank you, Detroit.