Fans reflect on 53 years of Bills stadium: 'There's a lot of memories'
Buffalo Bills fans are planning to take the time to soak it all in Sunday during what will likely be the team's final game in its 53-year stadium.
Buffalo Bills fan Jason Poch became a local meme when he was caught on camera crying during the broadcast of the team’s wild-card round game in 2021 – Buffalo's first playoff victory in 25 seasons.
The longtime season ticket holder at what is now Highmark Stadium was overcome by joy after seeing the team get past years of struggles to win a postseason game during a season wrought by Covid attendance restrictions.
Poch believes he’s going to experience many of the same emotions when he attends Sunday’s 4:25 p.m. regular-season finale at home against the New York Jets, which will likely be the Bills’ final game in their 53-year-old Orchard Park stadium.
An aerial view of the new Buffalo Bills stadium construction and Highmark Stadium on July 15, 2025.
Joshua Bessex/Buffalo News
“I think about that time now and wonder if I’ll cry again Sunday,” said Poch, 45, of Hamburg, an information technology project manager for the State University of New York and a season ticket holder since 2002.
Bills fans, considered some of the most loyal to their team in the NFL, will take the time to soak it all in Sunday – the tailgate and pregame rituals, a final walk to the stadium, looking around the bowl prior to the game, being around friends and family, the sights and sounds of the action from the first to last whistle and then the final walk out.
“It’s emotional because I won’t be able to walk into there anymore,” added Poch, who over his time as a season ticket holder got married and now has three children, 12, 10 and 7, who he sometimes takes to games. “I remember going there for the Winter Classic, high school football games and concerts. The building will be gone, but the memories won’t go away.”
While Highmark Stadium may be one of the NFL’s oldest and most antiquated stadiums, it also holds 53 years of memories. A lot of those memories represent mirrors for fans’ lives.
No Super Bowl banners have been hung in that time, and the team endured some lean stretches, including a 17-year playoff drought that started in the early 2000s. But the AFC title-winning teams of the early 1990s and the Bills becoming a championship contender again in more recent seasons have certainly provided some unforgettable moments.
“It is a slab of concrete and that’s about it, but it’s a fun stadium,” said Tomas Callocchia, 39, a Buffalo attorney who started regularly going to games at age 16. “There’s not many of these stadiums left and it just feels like a better place to watch football. I’m excited for the new stadium, but it will never be the same.”
Buffalo Bills cornerback Christian Benford (47) celebrates his pick-six with fans during the fourth quarter at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park on Dec. 7, 2025.
Derek Gee/Buffalo News
Fans have been able to get a front-row seat to the construction of the more-than-$2 billion stadium going up across the street on Abbott Road.
“It’s still weird to think that it’s going to be the last game at the stadium – the only stadium I have known,” said Phil Pantano, a public relations specialist who will be taking his 20-year-old son to a game for the first time on Sunday. “It opened in 1973 and I was born in ’74. It’s strange to think that even though we’re seeing this new stadium take life in real time, that Rich Stadium, as a lot of people still call it, isn’t going to be there.”
While around 75% of season ticket holders have purchased a seat license for the right to buy seats for the new stadium set to open in 2026, there are fans, including longtime season ticket members, who will not be coming over.
Michael Wojcicki, a retired teacher who’s a 43-year season ticket holder in his 60s, knows Sunday may be the last game he attends. He’s been going with his brother and friends since the early 1980s, but they decided against purchasing a PSL for the new stadium.
“It’s sad that it is coming to an end. There’s a lot of memories,” Wojcicki said. “We’ve sat through the thick and thin and just enjoyed going – from the tailgate to the game to after the game and the talk about what the team could’ve done better.”
Buffalo Bills season ticket holder Jeremy Sasiadek with his fiancée Krystie Callari, Alba Callari, 9,
and Dawson Sasiadek during a photo shoot during the final season at Highmark Stadium. Contributed by Becca Anna Photography
Jeremy Sasiadek already knows what it feels like to sit through his last game at Highmark Stadium – last Sunday's rain-soaked 13-12 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. He’s a season ticket holder of 13 years, but he gave his seats for this Sunday’s game to his nephew as a gift.
“It felt weird. I compare it to leaving your childhood home,” said Sasiadek, deputy district director for State Sen. April Baskin. “You have your final moments with the place and are fond of all the memories, and it’s very bittersweet.”
Fans will miss their ‘second family’
Season ticket holders have sat next to or around some of the same fans for years, and Sunday will likely mark the final time for some of those relationships and interactions.Even if fans are continuing to the new stadium, many of them will not be in the same sections or rows, and those encounters may become fewer.
Wojcicki has sat in the same seats for many years. The people around him have become like a “second family,” he said.
“We’ve shared in the excitement, high fiving, talking about the Bills and what’s happening in the game and what happened leading up to it,” Wojcicki said.
Brigette Voisinet, who became a season ticket holder 10 years ago at 18, is sad that this will be the last time she’ll be around many of these same people at a game.
“We only see each other at games and don’t know too much about each other’s personal lives, but we understand each other well, get along well and we know each other’s little quirks, like the guy in front of me who always wears shorts to games no matter how cold it is," Voisinet said.
No starters, no problem
The Bills likely will hold back at least some starters on Sunday with the AFC East division title no longer on the line, and the team locked into one of three wild-card spots.But for many Bills fans, that won’t take away from being there Sunday.
“Because the game is so inconsequential, it’s really about the experience of going and being there for the last time,” Pantano said. “Let’s go and soak in the moment.”
Buffalo Bills longtime season ticket holder Jason Poch with his son Ethan at a Bills game at Highmark Stadium.
Contributed image
Poch would like to see the Bills go out with a win but understands that the team may feel the need to rest some starters as the team tries to make a playoff run.
“If anything, it could turn into more of a remembrance if some of the players don’t play,” Poch said. “Maybe on the Jumbotron, they’ll show old stuff from the 1970s and ‘80s. It’s more about remembering all the good times and fun.”
Super Bowl era was 'pinnacle'
Some of the greatest memories made inside the stadium were leading up to and during the era of four straight Super Bowl appearances in 1991 to 1994.While O.J. Simpson was thrilling to watch run, including a 2,000-yard rushing campaign in the stadium’s inaugural season, the Bills made the playoffs in just one of their first seven seasons in the stadium. They had a few good seasons in the early 1980s under head coach Chuck Knox but would experience a six-year playoff drought and won few playoff games before their first AFC championship team in 1990-91.
Many fans believe the franchise’s greatest achievement is when the Bills dominated the Los Angeles Raiders, 51-3, in the 1991 AFC championship for the team’s first trip to the Super Bowl. That team included eventual Hall of Famers Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, Andre Reed and Bruce Smith and was led by head coach Marv Levy.
“Seeing them clinch their first trip to the Super Bowl and the way that they did it, that’s probably the best sporting event I’ve ever been to,” said Pantano, who slept outside an M&T Bank branch office to get in line early enough to buy playoff tickets during the Super Bowl era.
“That was the pinnacle for Bills football to that point in time,” Wojcicki added. “The place was just crazy for that game. Each year after that, the excitement and anticipation for the season was so high.”
Allen era exceeds expectations
The Bills best years were followed by some of their worst seasons.The team entered a playoff drought in the early-2000s that would last 17 seasons, but fans like Sasiadek said they were still inspired to get season tickets during that time and enjoyed many of the games.
But not as much as they do now and much of that has to do with the NFL's reigning MVP.
In his eighth season, Josh Allen has provided Bills fans with some of their most memorable moments in the stadium.
“Josh has made these last seven years so special,” Sasiadek said. “It’s made it great not only to be a season ticket holder but also even more special being through all those rough years. I wasn’t really around for the Kelly years, so this is like my '90s Bills.”
One of the most popular games at the stadium for fans during the team’s more recent run was the “perfect” game where the Bills in zero-degree weather defeated the New England Patriots, 41-17, in the 2022 AFC wild-card round without punting.
“Seeing us lose to the Patriots for so many years and finally beating them, and in the playoffs, it was just a party in our seats, people jumping up and down and dancing the whole time,” Voisinet said.
On Sept. 14, 1980, work crews had an unexpected job: erecting new goal posts. The reason was one that fans had been waiting for:
The old ones were torn down and damaged in celebration a week earlier after the Bills beat the Dolphins, ending a 20-game losing streak. Buffalo News archives
More memories
David Sherman, the former managing editor of the Bee Newspapers, was a freelance photographer for United Press International during games in the late-1970s and '80s. He shot some of the biggest moments during that time, including when fans tore down the goal posts in 1980 after ending a decadelong losing streak to the Miami Dolphins.“It’s very nostalgic to think back,” Sherman said. “The new place will never replace the old place. My jaw drops every time I drive by the new stadium, but it won’t have the quirks that the old stadium has.”
One of the anomalies of the stadium has been all the snow games, including when the Bills beat the Indianapolis Colts, 13-7, in 2017 when the field was blanketed in white during blizzardlike conditions.
“I was there with one of my best friends who’s a Colts fan and there’s a fun picture of us wrapped together in a blanket freezing,” Voisinet said said. “That was one of my first seasons, so I wasn’t fully sure of how to dress properly for the weather.”
Some taking a piece of building with them
The Bills have been adamant about fans not trying to leave the final game with any items from the stadium.The Erie County Sheriff’s Office has said it will beef up security inside the stadium to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Instead, the team is putting some items up for sale, including seats, benches, pieces of the goal post and turf, with proceeds going to Erie County.
Poch already purchased his two seats from the stadium, and they’ll go into his office next to the orange seat he purchased from Memorial Auditorium after it closed in the 1990s.
Hoping for another home game
The 11-5 Bills are in the third and final wild-card spot as the seventh seed in the upcoming postseason.The team can move up to as high as the fifth seed for the playoffs with a win Sunday over the Jets and some help. The Bills would need to be a five or six seed to have any chance to host a playoff game in the later rounds.
“Until someone tells me we cannot host the AFC championship, then there’s that possibility,” Poch said. “It most likely won’t happen, but never say never. The city is still built on hope and because we’re Bills fans, we’re eternal optimists.”