Is Buffalo a Cursed Sports Town?

We have been aware of many alleged sports curses throughout sports. The Curse of the Bambino on the Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs Goat Curse, and more, but what about a curse on an entire city and its sports teams?

Image of the Washington Football Team at Buffalo Bills (26 September 2021) is Courtesy of All-Pro Reels from District of Columbia, USA via Wikimedia Commons

Greg Tranter recently released another great sports history book. This time, it is The Buffalo Sports Curse. Greg chats about the Bills with "WIde RIght" and "13 seconds" but also goes through some of the other Western New York sports teams, such as the Buffalo All-Americans and the "Staley Swindle," and more. The book is available through multiple outlets and one way is RIT Press The Buffalo Curse. Learn all about it and pick up your copy today.

Here is a link to get a copy of Greg's work: Buffalo Sports Curse Book.

-Transcribed Conversation with Greg Tranter on his Buffalo Sports Curse Book

Hello, my football friends; this is Darin Hayes of PigskinDispatch.com. Welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And we are going to stare down that portal tonight and talk to our friend and historian, Greg Tranter, who is authored a few books on football. We've talked to him and Jeff Miller just recently about their book from last year called Relics about the Buffalo Bills and some of the memorabilia that they wrote about.

Well, Greg is back with another book called The Buffalo Sports Curse. Very interesting. Indeed.

Hi, Greg Tranter. Welcome back to the Pig Pen. Hey, thanks a lot, Darren.

Great to be back. Greg, you are staying extremely busy. You said you just had this book published with Jeff last year or earlier this year.

And now this book, and you're telling me you have a couple more books in progress. So you're a very busy guy. So, we appreciate you taking the time to come and talk with us tonight.

Yeah, thanks. I appreciate the opportunity. So maybe you could describe the Buffalo Sports Curse.

Now, that's something we've heard of curses of other teams, perhaps like the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox and some of those curses. But I've never really heard of the Buffalo Sports Curse. So maybe you can enlighten us a little bit about basically what this is.

So, yeah, the interesting part of the Buffalo Sports Curse is it's not one team. It affected every professional team in Buffalo in the four major sports of baseball, basketball, football, and hockey all the way back to 1901. So it's affected not only the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres that people are very familiar with, but also the Buffalo Federals from the Federal Baseball League back in 1914 and 15, the Buffalo All-Americans that were an original franchise in the National Football League, all the way through.

It even affected a few individuals, including superstars like O.J. Simpson and Baby Joe Macy, who is a boxer in Buffalo. So it's very expensive, much more so than the Chicago Cubs or the Boston Red Sox, because there were other teams in those cities that were winning championships. OK, so generally, these curses, especially the two we mentioned, we know that the Boston Red Sox curse was like the curse of the Bambino, supposedly because they sold the rights to Babe Ruth.

The Cubs, I believe, was the Billy Goat Tavern curse of somebody, a tavern owner brought a Billy Goat into one of the games. He asked to leave with his goat and he put a curse on a team and it lasted decades. So what's sort of the root of this curse in Buffalo? So three things happened in 1901 to create the curse.

One, President William McKinley was in Buffalo visiting the Pan-American Exposition and was assassinated in September of that year. Earlier in 1901, Buffalo was an original franchise in the American Baseball League that was just forming at the turn of the century. And what happened was they had paid their franchise fee, were told by President Ban Johnson, who was the president of the American League, that they were in the league.

At the last minute, Ban Johnson double-crossed Buffalo when he realized he needed a team in Boston to compete with the Boston Braves. So, he moved the Buffalo franchise to Boston. They became the Boston Americans.

In 1903, they won the first World Series. In 1907, they were renamed the Boston Red Sox. The third thing that happened in 1901 was that the owner of the Buffalo baseball team died of a heart attack at 53 years old.

And many people say he died of a broken heart because he wanted a major-league baseball team in Buffalo. So it was those three things in combination that happened in 1901 that started the curse. Huh.

Very interesting. So this is, you know, what, 121 years old, this curse? Yes. And no Buffalo team has won a universally recognized championship in any of the four major sports of baseball, basketball, football, and hockey.

The Buffalo Bills won two AFL championships in 64 and 65. But at that time, the AFL was considered inferior to the NFL. And so the Bills would not have been considered the professional football champion of the sport.

It would have been the NFL team. And other than those two, no team has won a universally recognized championship. And there's a cursed event on every team that's been a professional franchise in Buffalo in one of the four major sports.

Hmm. OK, so maybe you could describe some of those of all four sports. Sure.

And of course, of course, you know, everybody's pretty familiar, right, with Wide Right in Super Bowl 25, the Music City Miracle in the 1990 AFC Divisional Playoff in Tennessee, the no goal when Brett Hall scored the winning goal for the Stanley Cup, and his skate was in the crease, which, of course, was against league rules that year. And then even last year, the 13 seconds in Kansas City, where Buffalo was 13 seconds away from winning that playoff game and then hosting, they would have hosted the AFC championship game. So there are those that people are very familiar with.

But lots of people don't know that, for example, Buffalo had an original franchise in the American Professional Football Association, which, of course, was the forerunner of the NFL. And they had a team called the Buffalo All-Americans. And in 1920, they actually played for the championship in Buffalo, even though there wasn't really a championship game.

But they played Akron at the end of the season, and they had the two best records in the APFA. If Buffalo won that game, they would have been NFL champions. If they tied, Akron would win because it had had no losses.

Buffalo had won. And so, of course, they tied. So Akron won the championship.

What's worse is the following year, in 1921, Buffalo goes through what they thought was the regular season undefeated. And they were crowned champions, at least by the press. And then the owner, Frank McNeil, the owner of the Buffalo All-Americans, agreed to play what he thought were two exhibition games at the end of the season.

They beat the Akron Pros one day and the next day they played the Chicago Staley's and lost the game 10 to 7. At that point, George Halas, who was the owner of the Staley's, claimed that that game counted and that the Staley's should be champions because if you included those two games, the Staley's had a better winning percentage than Buffalo did. They were 9-1-1 and Buffalo was 9-1-2. And he also claimed that the Staley's won by more points.

They had won 10 to 7 earlier in the year. Buffalo had won by one point. So they had a point differential advantage.

So he basically went to the rest of the owners and lobbied to be champions of the league. And in the spring of the following year, the owners voted the Staley's NFL champions. It is now known as Staley's Swindle because of the back office maneuverings of George Halas, and McNeil, the Buffalo All-Americans owner, fought that decision for the rest of his life.

Up until all the way until 1961, and then his wife carried the banner after that until she died. But the Staley's are still considered NFL champions to this day. We had a discussion, I had Joe Ziemba on about a week ago, and we spoke with him about his book on Cardinals and the Bears that he wrote that was released recently and quite a bit about Halas in it.

And we talked a little bit about Halas, you know, sort of being, you know, did a lot of great things for the game, but he was sort of, you know, really jockeyed things for his team to try to gain an advantage for his team. And, you know, this Staley's Swindle being one of them and a couple of others that he did, I believe, Portsmouth and Green Bay, he sort of screwed them out of some championships and tried a couple of others, too, that Joe Carr and I believe dismissed and wouldn't let him do. But, yeah, that's a that's a pretty big one when you get a championship taken from you.

Well, and then and then he came back to haunt Buffalo years later with the All-American Football Conference. If you remember the AFC from 1946 to 49, Buffalo had a franchise in there. In that franchise, they were the. I think their attendance was the third-highest in the league.

They made the playoffs two years in a row, actually played a championship game against Cleveland and lost like everybody did. But when they went to merge, Buffalo had an opportunity to merge in if they got 100 percent of the votes of the owners. George Halas voted against it.

So he was still holding a grudge, you know, 20, what, 29 years later. How could he have a grudge? He got what he wanted the other times. Right.

Well, because McNeil fought for the rest of his life, he was mad. I see. And so Buffalo was left out of the NFL in 1950 when, you know, the Browns joined in the 49ers, you know, joined and so on.

Buffalo was left out. So, yeah, Halas comes back to haunt them later. And that's in the book, too.

And he vaulted the Colts into that. Yes. Right.

OK, so so, yeah, a lot of football is happening there. And you talked a little bit about the AFL championships, but the AFL is not quite ready to merge with the NFL. They were competition and sort of lesser competition.

And then you get into these, you know, some of the NFL seasons of the Bills. And there's some bad luck there like you talk about a few of them already. Well, yeah, I mean, even let's go back to the AFL.

So in, Buffalo won the championship in sixty-four and sixty-five, and then sixty-six became the first year of the Super Bowl. So, they actually have an opportunity to become universal champions. Right.

They win the AFL East Division. And they play Kansas City in the AFL championship game to go to Super Bowl one. And it's at home, and they're trailing near the end of the first half, 14 to seven.

Jack Kemp is playing quarterback and driving the Bills to the tying touchdown. They get inside the 20-yard line near the end of the half, and Kemp throws what looks to be a touchdown pass in the end zone. And the Bills receiver slips and falls down.

And Johnny Robinson steps in front of him, intercepts the pass, returns at 70 yards. It sets up a field goal at the end of the half. And instead of the game being tied 14 to 14, the Chiefs are up 17 to seven and they go on to win 31 to seven.

And the Bills are denied the opportunity to go to Super Bowl one. And actually a lot of people, a lot of football historians will tell you that the Bills actually were a better matchup for the Packers than the Chiefs were, because as you may or may not know, but Buffalo still holds the record for the most consecutive games, not allowing a rushing touchdown. And so they would have handled the Packers sweep.

And so, who knows? I mean, you know, it's all speculation of whether the Bills would have beaten them or not, but my guess is they would have given them a better game. But either way, they lost their opportunity to be the universal champions in 1967. And then you fast forward to the NFL.

Of course, there are the four Super Bowls. There's not only Super Bowl 25, you know, where, you know, Wide Right, which I don't know if you or if any of your listeners saw the 30 for 30 on the four falls of Buffalo by ESPN a few years ago, but running back Kenneth Davis theorized that the Army helicopters that were flying over actually kept Norwood's ball from curving in because his kicks always curved in. And that kick didn't.

And he surmises that it was because of the Army helicopters. But then, you know, you have Super Bowl 26, where Thurman Thomas, you know, loses his helmet before the game. On the second play of the game, the Bills had planned for a certain run that they thought they could break for a touchdown.

The play opened up exactly like they thought. But Kenneth Davis, who was his replacement, ran to the wrong hole. And so no big play, no touchdown because Thurman was on the bench.

You know, who knows? That changed the game. Maybe the Bills still lose. You know, then you go to Super Bowl 27 in the Rose Bowl, and Jim Kelly gets hurt.

The Bills turn the ball over nine times. Then you go to Super Bowl 28. The Bills are up 13 to six at the half.

They have the ball to start the second half. They get to midfield. Thurman Thomas fumbles.

James Washington returns it for a touchdown. Instead of the Bills going up 16 to six or 20 to six, it's now 13-13. And the Bills unraveled at that point.

And there are many more. I mean, I think there are about a dozen different Bills-specific situations in playoff games that they lost that were very controversial. You know, so there's definitely a lot of football in the book.

But it does cover all the sports, all four. Yeah, well, that's some things I didn't realize about the Bills, especially that 1966 AFL championship game. Very interesting.

Now, there's a saying here, you know, I don't live that far from Buffalo. I'm in Erie, so I'm halfway between Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo. And, you know, I'm a Steelers fan, and the Bills just cleaned our clocks a couple of weeks ago.

Worse loss than the Tomlin era. But there's sort of been a joke that's gone around by Steelers fans, you know, talking about the Browns and the Bills about if you're and you want to date a girl and you don't really want to get married, you date a girl that's a Bills fan because she's patient about getting a ring. There's some humor in there, but.

Yes, 120 years, 120 years of waiting. I had to throw that in there because it sort of fit in. Now, OK, now take it, take a side, you know, being a Bills fan, because last year, the 2021 divisional playoff game against Kansas City, the 13 seconds had to be, you know, crushing, make you sick to your stomach as a Bills fan.

But as a football fan, I know it's hard to do; if you could peel back those layers of your love for your team, it had to be probably the greatest football game that was ever played at maybe any level because that was tremendous watching that last two minutes of the game. Yeah, no, I mean, it was. It's the only game in NFL history in which two teams scored 25 points in the last two minutes of regulation. I mean, you know, you saw it, and you saw it again this past Sunday.

Mahomes and Allen are quarterbacks who do things that other players just can't do. And, you know, you think you got him tackled. Do you think you got him hemmed in?

And then all of a sudden, well, there's a 20-yard play. And it's like, how does that happen? I thought we had him stopped. And it happened in that last two minutes last year.

It happened on both sides of the ball, right? It was like, you know, I mean, Tyree Kill goes for, you know, 70 yards. And then, you know, and then the Bills come right back and drive down the length of the field and score with 13 seconds left. And you're sitting there going, OK, I feel pretty comfortable.

There's only 13 seconds left. And they get 45 yards in two plays. Intense, you know, so I mean, and I think everybody that was watching that game wanted the Bills to get the ball in overtime, you know, to match them, right? Definitely.

I mean, to the point that the league changed the rule because everybody watching on TV was like, no, Allen deserves a shot to respond. Yeah, it was kind of interesting. My wife and I were supposed to be at a family member's for dinner and going to watch the second game.

I believe Tampa and the Rams were the next game, which was also a great game. So we were trying to make our travel plans. I tried to make my travel plans.

I tried to get them to time their dinner so I could get done with one game and go the other. So I kept telling my wife. I think I told her four times in the last two minutes.

Oh, this game's over, you know, Kansas City just scored. Oh, no, Buffalo just scored. This game's over.

And it's just kept the other team coming back. And unbelievable. That was edge-of-your-seat football there.

That was great. Yes. No, and see, I played into the curse.

I jinxed them because when they scored when the Bills scored with 13 seconds left, I turned to my wife, and I went, oh, my God, we're going to win. I'll never do that again. Right.

Yeah, that's extremely interesting. So that's so maybe this year, maybe this is the year that the curse can be broken. You know, you just had a Buffalo in a close game, but they overcame Kansas City at Kansas City.

Of course, they did last year during the regular season, I believe, too. But it's got to be a confidence booster knowing that you can go toe-to-toe with, you know, the great Andy Reed, Patrick Mahomes, and Kansas City Chiefs. And you've proven it, you know, three times in the last two years that you can take them right down to the final seconds.

And in their stadium, which is loud, noisy, and a difficult place to play. As I've said to a bunch of my friends this week, I said, I want Patrick Mahomes to come to Orchard Park in January. Let's see how he does with Bill's Mafia, the 20-mile-hour winds, and the freezing cold temperatures.

And let's see how comfortable he is. And those, you know, because the amazing part about the Chiefs is Mahomes has never played a road playoff game, right? He's always played at home. OK, come to Buffalo.

But, you know, fitting into that now, I believe the announcers on Sunday's game said that next year, Buffalo has to travel to Kansas City again. And I'm thinking, how can that game be at Kansas City every single year? You think you'd get one in Buffalo at one time, right? I know because because I mean, Alan's what they've played now, I think, five or six times. And only one of them has been in Buffalo, a regular season game during the pandemic when there were no fans allowed.

Come on. So that's even more advantageous because he's never experienced. Mahomes has never experienced a game with fans in Orchard Park.

It's very reminiscent. I think a similar thing with the Steelers and Patriots, you know, the Brady Roethlisberger years, it seemed like every year the Steelers would have to travel to Boston to play, except for one year. And that was the Jesse James controversy at the end of the game when the Patriots beat him in Pittsburgh.

But it was very, very similar. One team just gets all the home games during the regular season. I don't understand that.

So I know it's frustrating. OK, so I'm sorry. So tell us a little bit more about the curse with as far as your book.

And well, I guess, first of all, let's let's tell people where they can get the book. Yeah, so the book is available in many, many locations. But RIT Press published the book.

And so it's available on their website, which is www.rit.edu slash press slash Buffalo hyphen curse sports curse. So they can get it there. It will be available on Amazon right now if you go on Amazon because the book will officially be released next Monday.

And we have a kickoff at the Buffalo History Museum at six o'clock next Monday night. And I'll be giving a talk, you know, somewhat similar to this, you know, telling some of the stories that are in the book. So this will be Monday, October 24th and Monday, October 24th.

And folks, we were pre-recording this. So this is being released on the 24th. So don't be confused here.

Yeah. And then, of course, it'll be in all the local bookstores, Barnes and Noble, around Western New York. But online, either RIT or Amazon should should do the trick.

And the book, the way the book is structured, it's structured into 18 chapters that highlight different because it's it's kind of a combination history book curse book. So there's 32 cursed events that I talk about in the book. But I also give historical information about the teams leading up to the curse.

So you learn about, you know, the Buffalo All-Americans of the APFA. You learn about the Buffalo Federals that were in the Federal Baseball League in 1914 and 15. You learn about the Buffalo Braves basketball team in the 70s.

So you get some history along with it. And then it plays into, oh, and then here's the curse that occurred that affected the team and affected their ability to win a championship. Oh, very interesting.

Get a little bit of sports history, along with some of the controversial hypotheticals. And that's kind of interesting. Oh, sorry.

It also covers franchises that never came into being, but almost it. And then it also covers two individuals. It covers OJ Simpson and his fall from grace.

He's probably, you know, and again, a lot of people this day and age don't remember that OJ Simpson when he came out of USC, was not only considered the best player at the time, he was considered the greatest running back in college football history at that point in time. He was, and though the Bills never won a Super Bowl, obviously, he broke all kinds of records. And I would argue, you know, the murders occur, and his fall from grace is probably the greatest fall from grace of any athlete in American professional sports history.

Wow. Yeah, I didn't even think about that aspect. You're right.

That's quite a Buffalo connection, too. Very, very interesting. And we lost it, right? I mean, we lost it because, you know, he's a pariah now to a great degree.

Right. Yeah. You sort of lost that iconic figure in your history.

Before the great Bills teams of the nineties, he was probably the face of the franchise. Yeah. And he was beloved in Buffalo, for sure.

But I mean, even nationally. Wow. Very interesting.

Great storyline. I mean, I'm glad you wrote those books. That's very intriguing.

Greg described where you can get it. If you're driving or don't have a writing utensil, we will have as many links as we can in the show notes of this podcast. So you can get information and links, right?

To get connected to Greg's book of the Buffalo sports curse. And, you know, hopefully, you know, get these things out while they're hot here. Probably make some great gifts for the holidays, for the sports fans in your life.

I'm sure. And, you know, some great reading. Very interesting.

So, so Greg, you know, you've got a couple other projects coming up. I don't know if you want to discuss them or just leave them for now, not jinx them or. No, no, no, no.

I have two books that hopefully we'll publish next fall. One is a football book, which is a timeline of the history of the bills. So we're basically creating a book that takes about 150 Bill's stories and puts them on a timeline with photos from the birth of the franchise right up through this season.

And we call them vignettes because there'll be 350 to 500 word stories about significant things that happened in Bill's history. And they'll be basically through the book in sequence of the time when they occurred. And I'm doing that with a company called Reedy Press.

They did one book about the Chiefs a couple of years ago. And so we're doing one on the bills, and that'll be published next fall. Um, and then I'm also doing a basketball book on the Buffalo Braves basketball team that today is the LA Clippers, but they were in Buffalo from 1970, 1978 and had superstars like Bob McAdoo, Ernie DeGregorio, Randy Smith, where they're like big name players.

And they're in the curse book, too. They have a couple of cursed events to go along with that franchise. But that will be more of a total history book.

And I've also, we've also written biographies on every player that played for the team. There were 83 players that played and we've written a biography on every person. And that one, I'm collaborating with a guy named Bud Bailey, who's a Buffalonian, who's a former sports reporter for the Buffalo news.

Wow. You are a busy guy. I hope you get these books done and out to the publisher quickly.

So you can get a little bit of sleep here. You gotta be going 24 seven to do all that. Wow.

All fun, though. All that I love doing. So, well, Greg, why don't you give us the title of your book again? Once again, it's the best place to get it.

And, uh, you know, before. All right. It's called the Buffalo sports curse.

One hundred twenty years of pain, disappointment, heartbreak, and eternal optimism. So that's the full title of the book. It's available at RIT press, which is www.rit.edu slash press.

And the book will be there. You can also get it on Amazon or at any of the local bookstores around Western New York, which will be available. So, it will officially be released on October 24th, but you can order it today.

All right. Well, Greg Tranter, historian, author, collector. Thank you very much for coming on here and sharing the story of this great book and for writing this book and sharing this, the great stories contained in it of the Buffalo curse.

And, uh, appreciate your time. All right, Darin. Thank you.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.