How defending the Bills made me love Buffalo

Arguing with New Jerseyans can have unpredictable effects

Buffalo.

Growing up just outside of Buffalo, New York, Sunday occasionally meant football. More often, it meant my dad settling into his recliner and turning on the Bills game, snorting a few times, and then switching off the TV after the first quarter. He, my mom, and I would then head to a craft show and look at some crocheted washcloths.

My disgust with Buffalo and disinterest in sports, save for a brief infatuation with the 2005-06 Buffalo Sabres, unsurprisingly came with me to college. I only went to Syracuse's homecoming football game freshman year because I wanted friends, and when a dorm floormate from New Jersey told me he loved "all Buffalo sports," I said he had to be lying. But I soon learned there's a lot to love about a perpetually stumbling football team in a city past its prime. I just had to learn to defend them first.

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Kathryn Krawczyk

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.