Buffalo Bisons and Bills

What an honor it was to talk to the top three experts in Buffalo, New York professional football history on the franchise's participation in the All-American Football Conference. Greg Tranter, Jeff Miller and Ken Crippen are all in one podcast perserving some Bison and Bills AAFC history!

The AAFC brought 8 teams into the professional football spotlight in the inaugural season of 1946. One of them was a franchise from Buffalo, New York that was at first called the Buffalo Bisons. In year two after a poll of fans the franchise received its own unique name, different from the towns hockey and monor league baseball club, and the professional football team from Buffalo was for the first time called the Bills.

We are only going to skim the surface below in this post as the details are brought to you from three experts on Buffalo Bills history above in the accompanying podcast.

Ken Crippen of the Football Learning Academy and author of multiple books on the Bills and the AAFC. The Original Buffalo Bills: A History of the All-America Football Conference Team, 1946-1949 and The All-America Football Conference: Players, Coaches, Records, Games and Awards, 1946-1949

Jeff Miller an expert football historian in his own right, has also penned a few books on the subject of the Bills Rockin' the Rockpile as well as 100 Things Bills Fans Should Know Before They Die

Greg Tranter is our third expert historian, and owner of the largest collction of Buffalo Bills memorabilia on the planet and he too has authored his fair share of fine work on the Bills. Makers, Moments and Memorabilia: A Chronicle of Buffalo Professional Sports 

Greg and Jeff co-wrote a great work on Buffalo Bills history using pieces from their collections Relics.

All in all these three guys have wrote about ten books collectively that pertain to our topic of the Bills and countless articles on the subject. You most certainly do not want to miss what they have researched in the hardwork they have authored about Buffalo and you are in for a real treat listening to them altogether here in the Pigpen on the podcast up above. 

Here are the basics of Buffalo in the All-American Football Conference:

AAFC 1946: The team played as the Bisons, was owned by James Breuil and finished the season with a 3-10-1 record and finished third in the AAFC East

AAFC 1947: The moniker of the team changed to the Bills (Ken tells the reasons for this name in the podcast). They had a record of 8-4-2 and finised second in the AAFC East

AAFC 1948: The team posted a 7-7-0 record and won the AAFC East but lost to Cleveland in the title game.

AAFC 1949: The Bills were 5-5-2 and finished in 4th place in the AAFC East.

Prior to the 1950 season the ownership from theses Bills teams tried their best to be accepted into the NFL along with the Browns, Colts and 49ers, however their application and charter were not approved by the League. Thus this AAFC Buffalo Bills team is not the same as the Bills team we know today, nor the one that was in the AFL in the 1960s. 

The banner drawing is of a buffalo or bison from an 1876 rendering of the animal by an unknown artist. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant historians Greg Tranter, Jeff Miller and Ken Crippen, the Sports Reference's family of website databases & Stathead.com