Buffalo and Detroit, forever linked, can finally dream of a Rust Belt Super Bowl
There is a long history of Buffalo and Detroit sharing their inspirational figures.
Joyce Carol Oates and Rick James, Bob Lanier and Pat LaFontaine.
They’ve easily traversed the path around Lake Erie, whether via Interstate 90 or Ontario’s Highway 401, to find a familiar environment on the other side: another vibrant Rust Belt city that’s been kicked in the teeth but refuses to roll. They’re union towns, hard-drinking towns. They are poorer than most places their size. On the Canadian border, Tim Hortons is a local coffee shop and Labatt Blue is considered a domestic beer. Their sports teams are oxygen.
And for generations, the Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions have robbed them.
There have been successes, of course: the Bills with their back-to-back AFL titles in the 1960s and four straight Super Bowl losses thirty years ago, the Lions with their pre-JFK dominance and the brilliance of Barry Sanders to the point where too much dysfunction left him fuses.
Who could have entertained the idea that Buffalo and Detroit would play for the Lombardi Trophy?
“It would be a Super Bowl made in Heaven,” said Mary Wilson, widow of Bills founder and Detroit businessman Ralph Wilson. “It would be great.”
A possible championship preview will be the main storyline Sunday when two ringless franchises meet at Ford Field. The 12-1 Lions were betting favorites to win the NFC, while the 10-3 Bills fell to the second-best odds in the AFC last week behind the Kansas City Chiefs, who the Bills swept last month.
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Just three seasons ago, every fan base wanted to tie its head coach to a ship downriver. Lions coach Dan Campbell is the clear favorite for Coach of the Year. Bills coach Sean McDermott picked up his fifth straight AFC East crown with a month of games remaining.
“There are so many similarities,” said John Beilein, a former basketball coach at Canisius College and the University of Michigan. Beilein, a lifelong Bills fan from nearby Burt, NY, is the Detroit Pistons’ senior advisor for player development.
“It’s amazing how these teams have evolved. They’ve all had a renaissance, with their culture of good, smart teams that don’t beat themselves. Dan Campbell could run for mayor, governor and senator and he would win.”
Buffalo and Detroit are interchangeable when it comes to the old “drinking town with a football problem” joke.
Their NFL teams are so important, at least in part, because they enjoy a cheerful distraction. Recent data shows that they are similarly ranked among the major metropolises unionization (Buffalo first, Detroit seventh), poverty (Detroit second, Buffalo third) and drinking excessively (Buffalo fourth, Detroit 13th).
“It’s cold, dreary and dreary and there’s not much else to do, so they stick to their teams,” said former Bills and Lions tight end Pete Metzelaars, who grew up in Michigan, between Detroit and Chicago. “These are cities that went through difficult times and needed a transition, that had to recreate themselves – just like their football teams.
“Buffalo lives and dies and bleeds with the bills. The city’s hopes and dreams rise and fall as the Bills win or lose, all wrapping up Monday morning wow wow wow wow wow. Detroit has been waiting for a successful team for years and years and years. Now they live and die with the Lions too.”
Sports examples of the intermingling of Detroit and Buffalo abound. Chris Spielman was a linebacker with heart and soul in both cities. Popular Bills quarterbacks Joe Ferguson and Frank Reich made their final starts for the Lions.
Dominik Hasek, the Buffalo Sabres’ best goaltender, won the Stanley Cup twice with the Detroit Red Wings. Sabers great Danny Gare later became the captain of the Red Wings. Roger Crozier won the Conn Smythe Trophy with Detroit before becoming the first goalie in Sabers history.
No. 16 hangs from the rafters of every downtown arena. Lanier, the Bennett High and St. Bonaventure legend, will be honored by the Pistons at Little Caesars Arena. LaFontaine, the Hall of Fame center who grew up in suburban Detroit, saw his number retired at KeyBank Center.
But it was Ralph Wilson who made the biggest crossover impact.
Wilson was a co-founder of the Foolish Club, the group of arsonists that founded the AFL in 1960. The Detroit insurance, construction, trucking and broadcasting magnate owned a minority stake in the Lions and tried to become a full-fledged NFL owner, but he grew weary of the league’s unwillingness to expand and instead joined the AFL. Wilson initially tried to base his team in Miami, but when the city refused to lease the Orange Bowl, he moved to Buffalo.
“The reason Ralph went to Buffalo was because he was told it was such a great sports town, and Buffalo lived up to that,” Mary Wilson said. “Two great football cities. Detroit is an incredible sports city, but its biggest fans are the Buffalo Bills.”
The Lions’ influence on the original bills was undeniable. Ralph Wilson hired Lions defensive coordinator Buster Ramsey as the Bills’ first head coach. The Bills also adopted the Lions’ uniform and helmet colors (Honolulu blue, silver and white), but switched to their current colors for their third season. A Bills-Lions summer exhibition was common beginning in 1967 until the NFL took over preseason scheduling from individual clubs a few years ago.
Wilson remained close friends with Lions owner William Clay Ford Sr. until their deaths, 16 days apart, in March 2014.
Mary Wilson took control of the accounts until they were sold. Terry and Kim Pegula made the highest bid of $1.4 billion. It was a formality when NFL owners approved the purchase of the Pegulas during an Oct. 8 meeting that had been on the league’s calendar for more than a year.
The date provided a poetic transition. Mary Wilson knew that the final game of Ralph’s ownership era would end three days before the vote. She was there, sitting on the Lions season tickets that Ralph held for more than half a century, when the Bills won 17-14 at Ford Field.
The last Bills game of the Ralph Wilson ownership era was a 17-14 victory against the Lions in Detroit. (Joe Sargent/Getty Images)
Now she helps oversee the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation, endowed with $1.2 billion from Bills sales, with a focus on grantmaking in Western New York and Southeast Michigan. A key initiative was committing $200 million to transform underutilized parks into community destinations. Buffalo’s old LaSalle Park on the Niagara River became the 100-acre Ralph Wilson Park, and Detroit’s abandoned West Riverfront Park is being converted into the new Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Park. Centennial Park.
Not since master landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted created Buffalo’s park system and Detroit’s Belle Isle Park in the late 19th century have cities’ green spaces been so enriched.
“The two riverfront parks in Detroit and Buffalo will be Ralph’s greatest legacy,” said Mary Wilson.
Ralph Wilson is said to have let out that trademark cackle when he heard his accounts had been sold to a boyhood Lions fan. Terry Pegula grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, but he adored Detroit Tigers right fielder Al Kaline. Pegula felt it was natural to adopt the Lions as his NFL team as well. Although never a Red Wings guy, Pegula tried to apply a heavy dose of “Hockeytown” mystique by naming his Sabers venture “Hockey Heaven.” The name didn’t stick.
Pegula has had considerably more success with his football club. As of his first full season as owner, the Bills have a winning percentage of .611 (compared to a winning percentage of .463 previously), reached the postseason in nine of ten seasons and had only two losing seasons.
Two of the Bills’ wins came with critical help from the Lions.
Buffalo is the “city of good neighbors,” but the Lions came to the Bills’ rescue twice when deadly snowstorms hit Western New York and forced the games to be moved. At Ford Field, the Bills played for the New York Jets in November 2014 and the Cleveland Browns in November 2022.
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In the 64 years that the Bills and Lions have existed, they have only made the playoffs in the same season five times. Before last year, they won a play-off game once in the same season. It happened in 1991, the Lions’ only postseason victory between their 1957 NFL title and last year.
“My coaching years at Michigan were the same years when the Bills were bad,” Beilein said, referring to Buffalo’s 17-year playoff drought that ended in 2017. “They went through three or four coaches, and so did Detroit . I had several guys on my staff and on the team from the Detroit area, and remember complaining about our teams and the misery-loving company I kept with all the Detroit fans. It connected us. A new coach, a new optimism, and we are back there.”
But the possibility of Detroit and Buffalo playing in the Super Bowl has added meaning someone would finally win one.
A great achievement to win the AFC and advance four winters in a row, but the Bills’ inability to capitalize on their chances is an organizational scar.
Of the group of 28 teams that existed during the 1976 NFL expansion, the Lions and Browns are officially the last franchises without a Super Bowl trip, although the original Browns did morph into the Baltimore Ravens, winners of two Lombardi Trophies .
To explore what an NFL championship would mean for Buffalo or Detroit, there are few better options than Mike Lodish, a native Detroiter and defensive tackle in the NFL for 11 years. Lodish played in a record six Super Bowls. After appearing in all of the Bills’ losses, he earned two championship rings with the Denver Broncos.
“The biggest similarity between the two cities — more than being blue-collar and Great Lakes and all the manufacturing — is that their fan bases want to win a championship so badly,” Lodish said. “Both Buffalo and Detroit need because they haven’t had one yet. The need is monumental.
“If the Tampa Bay Buccaneers can win a Super Bowl, why can’t Detroit or Buffalo? In the end it is everything.”
However, everyone interviewed for this story emphasized that a championship parade would have greater significance for Buffalo. They all root accordingly.
After all, Detroit has enjoyed sports glory this century through the Red Wings, Pistons, Tigers, Wolverines and Spartans.
Mary Wilson sold her home in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan, last month and now considers herself a Western New Yorker. She got rid of her suite at Highmark Stadium, she said, because she was tired of playing hostess and just wanted to focus on the game. So she now has six Bills season tickets in the crowd.
She also has two of Ralph’s six Lions season tickets. Mary sits in Ford Field on Sunday cheering on the visitors.
“I’m really looking forward to this game,” Mary Wilson said. “People ask me, ‘Who are you going to pull for?’ I say, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I will never go against the bills.”
(Top photo: Andy Lyons/Allsport, Kevin Sabitus, Harry How, Timothy T Ludwig, Mike Mulholland, Leon Halip/Getty Images, Steven King/Icon Sportswire)
