Buffalo Sports Curse

The Buffalo Sports Curse or simply the Buffalo Curse is a mythical explanation for Buffalo’s inability to win a Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, or any other major league sports championship. Teams that have settled in the city of Buffalo, such as the Buffalo Bills and the Buffalo Sabres have not won a championship since the Buffalo Bills won the 1965 AFL Championship.

Buffalo Bills
Those who believe in the Buffalo Curse cite as examples the four consecutive Super Bowl losses by the Buffalo Bills from 1990-1993. The first of these losses came from a failed last-second field goal attempt which went wide right. Since these four Super Bowls, the Bills have only won one game of the conference playoffs. The heart breaking and controversial loss due to the "Music City Miracle" in 2000 might have been the last straw for the Buffalo Bills, who have failed to make another playoff appearance since.

Less so of a curse is the Dallas Cowboys came back from a woeful performance by Tony Romo and a great performance by the Bills' defensive unit in the beginning to beat the Bills in 2007 when Nick Folk won it on a career-long 53 yard field goal, despite it was twice taken due to a prior timeout voided the first attempt.

Buffalo Sabres
The curse is also demonstrated in the failure of the Buffalo Sabres to ever win the Stanley Cup. The most notable example came in Game 6 of the 1999 Stanley Cup Finals when Brett Hull of the Dallas Stars clinched the cup for Dallas with what Sabres fans believe should have been No Goal, but was disputed as a legal goal by NHL officials, Al Strachan of the Toronto Sun, and Wayne Gretzky. One example was shown in 2006, when the Sabres lost to the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals, after having lost four of six starting defensemen due to injury. Years back, in another playoff game against the Philadelphia Flyers, a John LeClair goal found its way into the net through a hole in the netting. The goal withstood video review despite clearly going through the slit in the net and the league confirming this following the game. The most recent example was shown in 2007, when the Sabres lost to the Ottawa Senators in 5 games in the Eastern Conference Finals despite winning the President's Trophy that season. Three of those losses were by one goal. (This loss, however, has been more frequently blamed on the team's management, including managing partner Larry Quinn.)

Buffalo Braves
Buffalo is also the original home of the Los Angeles Clippers, then known as the Buffalo Braves, whose performance has been perennially substandard.

==Franchises "unaffected" by the curse==
The curse can somewhat be negated by the fact that the Buffalo Bisons and Buffalo Bandits have won, respectively, the International League and the National Lacrosse League championships (the latter happening during their tenure in the Major Indoor Lacrosse League). However, most sports observer do not consider minor league baseball or any version of the sport of lacrosse to be a major league sport, and thus do not count them against the "Curse."

The curse does not seem to stretch all the way across upstate New York since the Syracuse Orange men's basketball team won the NCAA title in 2003.

Despite such curses, Buffalo fans remain optimists and the Sabres were voted the best team that gave back to their fans in 2007 for any sport.

Curse theories
There are related "curse theories" which ties the city's declining fortunes, both in the field of sports and economically. The first ties to the assassination of President William McKinley, who was shot at the 1901 Pan American Exposition-- an event which arguably marked the apex of Buffalo's fortunes. However, it should be noted that Buffalo's strength continued to grow for another fifty years after McKinley's death. The more likely cause of the downward spiral of the city of Buffalo (and as a result of the loss of people, jobs and personal income for ticket revenues, its sports teams) is the opening of two notable structures: the Welland Canal, which effectively rendered the Erie Canal obsolete and ended Buffalo's practicality as a port city, and the Interstate Highway System, which made personal transit from the colder climate of Buffalo to warmer, more comfortable climates further south much easier. Indeed, while Buffalo and western New York stagnates, Fort Erie, Ontario (just across the border) continues to grow.

The curse is also attributed to Seneca chief and orator Red Jacket however there is no evidence he ever made such a curse.

A January 2008 ceremony in Buffalo by mystics and mediums led by paranormalist Mason C. Winfield III has claimed to have "lifted" the curse with Winfield's chant, "Put off your aches, your pains, your ills . . . God bless our Sabres and our Bills."

References in popular culture
In the 1996 X-Files episode "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", the Cigarette Smoking Man states that the Bills will never win the Super Bowl as long as he is alive, hinting that the four previous losses in the Super Bowl were his doing. The Bills would lose their first ever playoff game in Rich Stadium two months after the episode was broadcast against the Jacksonville Jaguars in what would be Jim Kelly's last game as a pro. They are 0-3 in the playoffs since the Cigarette Smoking Man made his statement with losses to Jacksonville, their arch-rival Miami and the Music City Miracle game against Tennessee. However, since the Cigarette Smoking Man's death in the 2002 finale, the Bills have not even made the playoffs, let alone won in them.

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