It is my belief that every fan of the New England Patriots should make at least one pilgrimage to Buffalo. Just one weekend in western New York will change your perception of the Bills and their fans.

As I’ve written in this space before, my friend Bob is a raving Bills fan. He has unopened boxes of Flutie Flakes. He proudly displays Marv Levy and Fred Smerlas bobbleheads. He owns a Marshawn Lynch Bills jersey, and I’m not sure even Lynch still has one of those.

I started going to one Buffalo game a season with Bob in 1999, and it was a regular thing through the 2012 season. Life finds a way of getting in the way, though, and until last week, I hadn’t been back. I was excited to see how the team, the city, and the stadium, rechristened with a fresh coat of paint and the name New Era Field, would look. Some random thoughts as I thank the weather gods the lake effect snow hit Buffalo two days after we left…

• New Era Field looks great. Yeah, the stadium shows it’s age, with narrow causeways and small restrooms. It was built in 1973, two years after long gone Foxboro Stadium. Most of the seats in New Era Field are metal bleachers, but unlike Foxboro Stadium, they have seat backs, so it doesn’t feel like you’re constantly leaning forward.

We sat in the upper level, right at the 50-yard line, and had an excellent view of the field. At that vantage point, you can see plays unfold, and that’s a plus. I’ve been to more than a dozen games in Buffalo, and I can’t recall ever having a bad seat. It’s not a matter of if the Bills get a new stadium, only when. Whether it’s built in downtown Buffalo or out in the suburbs like New Era Field, I hope it keeps the incredible sight lines.

• Bills fans I met were great people. After every Buffalo home game, the videos of Bills fans acting like lunatics circulate online. We didn’t see any of it. No fans jumping off trucks onto flaming tables. No chugging beer out of a Wiffle ball bat. No shenanigans of any sort, really. I don’t know if I should be disappointed in the Bills Mafia (as they call themselves) or impressed with their maturity. This is where I expect to receive links to assorted Bills fan hijinks from last week in my email. I can say there were no Booze Olympics in our corner of the parking lot.

Of the five in our group, Bob was the lone Bills fan, but fans tailgating around us were polite and friendly. Nobody gave any of us anything more than a good-natured hard time. Inside the stadium, Patriots fans outnumbered Bills fans in many sections. Ours was split pretty evenly, until Buffalo supporters started heading to the exits midway through the fourth quarter, when it was obvious the Bills were not going to rally from a 20-point deficit.

The guys tailgating next to us were Bills fans from southern Ontario. We talked about hockey more than anything else.

Even at their worst, the Patriots never went a generation without making the playoffs. The last time the Bills played in the postseason was the 1999 season. These are good, dedicated fans, and they deserve better. Plus, the Pats-Bills rivalry could use the juice that comes with both teams being contenders.

It’s worth noting, there was a much larger police presence in the parking lots than I remember from my previous Buffalo visits. But when a large segment of your fans refer to themselves as a mafia, I guess that’s to be expected.

• Downtown Buffalo is quiet, almost too quiet. After the game, we walked from our hotel a few blocks to Big Ditch Brewing, then a few blocks to Pearl Street Grill and Brewery. Both places were full and lively, but in between, we saw a handful of people at most. The streets of Buffalo were eerily quiet, like a zombie apocalypse. My guess is people just don’t live in downtown Buffalo. It felt the area was abandoned.

• There are worse ways to kill an hour than playing blackjack at a $5 table in a Niagara Falls, Ontario casino. I walked away from the table down a buck. With the exchange rate, I was actually down around 78 cents. Where else are you going to get an hour of entertainment for 78 cents?

Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242

tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @TLazarczykMTM

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