The wheels touched the runway after 1:30 a.m. ET, and the people were there when the team exited the plane. Thousands of Bills fans, braving the cold and the pandemic, showed up to greet the Buffalo Bills.
The Buffalo News has a roundup of social-media posts documenting the celebration that happened as the local NFL team brought home its first division title since 1995.
The spontaneous airport party happened in a season during which fans haven’t been able to attend home games. Governor Andrew Cuomo recently said that some fans possibly will be able to attend the first playoff game, which most likely will happen on the weekend of January 9.
Of course, a gathering like the one that happened last night won’t do anything to reduce local infection rates, which won’t make it any easier to get clearance to allow fans to attend the first postseason game in Buffalo since January 1997. Still, there’s no reason to wag fingers at this point; last night’s celebration happened without apparent planning, and saying that it shouldn’t have happened given the pandemic won’t change the fact that it did.
We all know the rules and the realities at this point. No amount of talking or tweeting or public service announcing will change it. That ball was dropped in March, and it’s far too late to try to scoop it up.
Maybe I’ve successfully been gaslit. Maybe I’m leery of the trolls who will hurl insults and specious what-about arguments if I complain about the bodies crammed together in a way they would never be crammed together in a 2020 football stadium.
Regardless, it’s no longer worth saying what we all know, because we all know it. Gatherings like this currently are not safe, but nothing anyone says is going to keep them from occurring.