The Song is Over

We had just parked across a sidewalk from Route 20, just east of the main entrance to Ralph Wilson Stadium, when I saw him late Monday afternoon. Wearing a blue number seven jersey and blue knit cap, standing atop what looked like an old moving van painted dark blue, the word “BILLS” writ very large on the front of the box, he prepared for the contest between Buffalo and Cleveland with a celebratory dance.

As snow floated down and a cloud-covered, darkening sky promised more, he pumped his arms and yelled something or other, circling his hips in perfect time to Journey’s seminal 1981 power ballad “Don’t Stop Believing”—better known to many as the Last Song Ever on The Sopranos.

Whether the uninhibited truck-top dancer retained full consciousness for another seven hours—long enough to see Rian Lindell’s last-minute 47-yard field goal attempt drift agonizingly off course—will never be known, other than by him and his close companions. It’s safe to guess, though, that he never ceased believing in his team.

He can stop now.

Lindell’s just-miss floated astray, completing a 29-27 Cleveland win, as well as the thorough negation of the 4-0 and 5-1 starts that had the more optimistic among us talking about home-field advantage in the American Football Conference playoffs and daring to use the phrase Super Bowl in ways that were not self-deprecatory for the first time in a decade.

Any realistic chance at Buffalo’s first playoff game, regardless of venue, since January 8, 2000, vanished into the freezing late-autumn night along with the second-most agonizing field-goal try to wander too far right in the Bills’ 49 seasons. As number one on the list has been recounted in the local media roughly 1,217 times since midnight Monday, we’ll avoid doing so here.

Having earned their fifth loss, equaling their victory total for the year, the Bills need to sweep their remaining six games to assure themselves of a playoff berth.

Winning five would also give them a shot at 10-6. But three teams with such a robust record have missed the postseason in the six seasons since the National Football League adopted its present divisional structure, which allows for only two wild-card teams in its January championship tournament. Cleveland failed to qualify last year, despite 10 regular-season wins, and today’s AFC standings, with four six-win teams ahead of Buffalo in the wild-card race, make it look like 11 will again be the standard.

The prospect of such mandatory perfection is particularly daunting, as they have already been beaten convincingly by half the teams they will face between now and December 30—the Miami Dolphins, the New York Jets, and New England Patriots.

Chris and I had arrived early enough to beat the worst of pre-game traffic in order to continue my quest to find what reporter Mark Yost described last month in the Wall Street Journal as “some of the worst-behaving fans in all of sports.” I figured that the late start, allowing for a near-infinite amount of tailgate, combined with the stakes involved for the Bills and the geographic proximity of their foes, would provide the ingredients for some truly foul behavior.

As during Buffalo’s win over San Diego last month, such hooliganism may well have taken place. It’s just that, save for a Bills fan running up behind a Cleveland loyalist and brutally flipping off his orange construction helmet, we could not find it.

After securing our easy-out parking spot, at a cost of $25, Chris set up his small, propane-fueled grill on, yes, the tailgate of his truck. Surveying the cooler full of meat we brought along, we decided to start with the Buffalo chicken sausage and meatballs in a barbecue-type sauce, saving the eight-ounce New York strip steaks for closer to game time.

A stroll through the stadium lots on its northerly side, then across Abbott Road to the temporary mall of vendors offering all manner of hats, shirts, and other souvenirs—except, it seems, the gaudy white cowboy hat emblazoned with a Bills logo that Chris and I were searching for—did reveal a couple of interesting trends, if not the sort of knuckle-dragging stupidity the Journal had led us to expect:

■ If someone were to compile a soundtrack to the tailgating experience at Ralph Wilson Stadium, it would suck. Unless, that is, you really can’t get enough Whitesnake.

Whether you’re near one of the more corporate gatherings—which are usually sponsored, oddly enough, by a beer or liquor company—or graced with the musical selection of the guy with the really loud stereo system a couple of rows over, you can be pretty sure of a couple things.

You will not hear anything recorded since 1998, with the possible exception of AC/DC’s new single or the occasional self-anointed DJ who decides that Limp Bizkit really is cool, after all.

You will hear what amounts to the 97 Rock playlist, minus the occasional gem that occasionally slips through amidst the endless anthem-rock loop.

Our walk through the gathering darkness of atmosphere and soul exposed us to such musical cliches as Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” but not the reprised merger with RUN-DMC, unfortunately, as well as the aforementioned Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again.”

I originally thought we were being treated to another helping of David Coverdale’s genius moments later, when we wandered through the 97 Rock Zone and were serenaded by “Rock Me.” Fortunately, Internet research prevented me from properly crediting this masterpiece to Great White, which one should never, ever confuse with Whitesnake.

At some beer company’s “Ultimate Tailgate,” I was a little surprised to hear the Smashing Pumpkins until realizing that the song, “Today,” was a hit 15 years ago and that it was not a recording by the original artists or a performance by a cover band, but a rendition delivered by a cluster of Guitar Hero players. While the video-game instruments allowed for a musical experience roughly equivalent to that delivered by many lesser cover bands, there was no electronically fudging the pubescent lead singer’s caterwauling.

So we moved on.

■ If you crave compliments, sincere or not, wear a big fake-fur coat to an event where people are drinking a lot.

I possess one such piece of outerwear, a mid-1970s number that represents perhaps the lone less-than-conservative article of clothing my father ever purchased. I am not quite sure which animal’s pelt it purports to replicate, except that the beast’s fur apparently has a somewhat sparkly quality.

I have no evidence that he ever actually put on the garment. In the interests of being a jerk, I had worn it a couple of times to high school in the mid-1980s. It sat in my parents’ closet until my then-pregnant wife discovered it a few years back. It kept her warm through much of the gestation period, then found a new home in our closet.

I first wore it to a Sunday-afternoon game in December 2006, getting rave reviews.

“You look like Joe Namath,” Chris said when I first put it on, issuing perhaps the most meaningful football-related fashion compliment possible.

While we were waiting in vain to be admitted to the stadium via Gate 1, I noticed a little pressure from the back and dismissed it as the gentle crowding that often gives way to firmer shoving, then a full-scale stampede in such situations. After feeling what I believed to be a face between my shoulder blades, though, I turned my head to see a small woman who had immersed herself in my plushness looking up and smiling.

“I couldn’t help it,” she said, before looking hopefully over at her less-amused significant other.

The highest praise, though, came from a security guard with whom I crossed paths while walking toward the gate. He came to a full stop and looked me up and down. Twice.

“Brother,” he said. “I need that coat.”

The inexplicable failure of Gate 1 to admit ticket-holders led us to finally seek entry through another portal, but not until half the first quarter had passed.

Fortunately, this also led us to miss Buffalo’s first two drives ending in Trent Edwards interceptions. We did, however, take in the second-year quarterback’s third errant throw, as well as the two punts sandwiched around it, along with the Cleveland touchdown that made it 13-0 with a little less than 10 minutes left in the second quarter.

We were adequately dressed for the cold, even sitting three rows from the top of the stadium, having completed our long bid to gain entry. We were set for the rest of the night. Until, that is, we realized that we were both hungry, the sausage eaten four hours earlier having been long digested. In the only serious mishap of our outing, the propane cylinder attached to Chris’ grill had leaked after the sausages were heated through, leaving us too little fuel to cook the steaks.

“You know, I’ve got plenty of propane for the grill back at the house,” I said. “If we left now, we’d be there eating steaks in the middle of the third quarter.”

He looked around, nodding seriously and pondering our options.

For all of two seconds.

“Let’s go,” he said.

As we made our way out through the parking lot, we walked by a man maintaining the rather impressive position of leaning against the side of a truck while passed out.

A couple hours later, we sat in a warm living room in front of a color television, having finished our steaks shortly before Lin Dawson’s rather amazing 56-yard field goal gave Cleveland the lead that Lindell’s miss preserved.

When Browns quarterback Brady Quinn took a knee to run off the final seconds, I thought, involuntarily, about the wretched Journey song that greeted us before the game and which we heard twice more during our pre-game travels.

Those who did not like the end of The Sopranos, which turned “Don’t Stop Believing” into the most-downloaded song of the pre-digital era, according to iTunes, usually cite the scene’s abruptness and lack of finality in the traditional dramatic sense.

So it was fitting that the song, which I’ve loathed since its release, served as a theme song for an evening on which the home team overcame a horrid start, as well as a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter, only to lose in the most painful of fashions.

Like life and well-written drama, football is not always fair, or even rational, in its conclusions.

Sometimes, it just ends.

Dave Staba has covered the Bills since 1990. He welcomes e-mail at dstaba13@aol.com. To read further analysis of Monday’s game, have a look at AV Daily at Artvoice.com.