What if Donald Trump had bought the Buffalo Bills?
Have you ever wondered to yourself what the sports world would look like if Donald Trump had bought the Buffalo Bills in 2014 and never ran for President? Well wonder no longer, below is a fictional retrospective of how it could’ve all played out.
Once upon a time in Buffalo…
Looking back at Donald Trump’s 8 year reign as the owner of the Buffalo Bills may forever be the most interesting time the NFL will ever see. For Trump and the league it was tumultuous, radical, tedious, some may say tragic, but certainly never boring. From questionable trades to scandals aplenty the years 2014 through 2022 were ripe with days Donald Trump led the stories on SportsCenter in the morning.
After failing to purchase the Patriots in 1988, 2014 was finally the year Donald Trump joined the elite ranks of NFL owners. After the death of Ralph Wilson at the age of 95, The Bills were put up for sale and Donald Trump saw his chance. With the help of Michael Caputo (a Republican operative who also helped advance the career of Vladimir Putin) and a “Ban Bon Jovi” movement, Trump was able to succeed. His bid of 2 billion dollars — the highest in NFL history at the time — beat out Terry Pegula and an investor group led by Jon Bon Jovi.
2014
At his first press conference as owner, flanked by the golden elevator doors of Trump Tower, Trump let everyone know that “Bon Jovi never stood a chance at owning the Bills” and made the bold claim that the Bills would win the Super Bowl in the first 5 years of his tenure. They finished the 2014 season with a record of 9–7, missing the playoffs.
2015
Donald Trump is a man who likes to see positive results fast, despite his numerous failed business ventures and multiple corporate bankruptcies. His team missing the playoffs was unacceptable, so he fired his GM Doug Whaley and replaced him with Donald Trump Jr, effectively letting the elder Trump control most football operations for the team.
Naming his son General Manager pales in comparison to future scandals the Bills owner would face, but the blatant nepotism left many around the league and the media stunned. Stephen A Smith called the move “idiotic” while Skip Bayless said that it was “certainly interesting” and “worth seeing how it played out.” Well, how it played out was the Bills finishing the 2015 season 8–8, once again missing the playoffs.
2016
In 2016 Donald Trump was the first and most vocal owner to speak out against the national anthem protests sparked by Colin Kaepernick. Players across the league, inspired by Kaepernick, began kneeling during the anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice in the country. Donald Trump did not mince words when calling any players who knelt during the anthem “cowards” and “despicable men, who should not be allowed to play football.”
He quickly implemented a rule for the Buffalo Bills that any player caught doing anything other than standing with their hand over their heart during the anthem would be fired immediately. Free speech activists decried this decision and implored the NFL to protect its player’s right to free speech. Roger Goodell’s comments left much to be desired stating that “there isn’t a lot I can do here, Donald is going to run his team how he sees fit, and that is his right as an owner.” There is still no word on if anyone ever saw what happened to Roger’s spine, or if maybe he was just born without one.
When Donald Trump was asked about the activists’ concerns, he had this to say: “How can something be free speech when it is disrespecting our flag that represents such great and immense freedom? Ask anyone, I’m the biggest fan of free speech there has ever been, but this isn’t free speech at all. If you ask me its anti-free speech and I don’t want that kind of thing on my team.”
Ultimately, several players for the Bills kneeled during the National Anthem and faced swift action from Trump. Showing that, unlike many things in his life, when it came to the suppression of free speech he wasn’t bluffing.
2017
While there weren’t any notable football events for Donald Trump in 2017, his personal life was plastered all over the tabloids, and his Twitter feed, as rumors began to swirl about Trump cheating on his wife Melania with multiple porn stars.
Trump was quick to deny these rumors, but as more and more women came forward, some with video evidence of the encounters (please, for the love of all things sacred, don’t look these up) Trump was forced to admit to the affairs. Melania divorced her husband with haste, earning an undisclosed but substantial amount of money even despite the prenup.
After Melania divorced him, Trump was quick to marry one of his mistresses Candi Cakes, just 4 months later. Showing himself to be the disloyal misogynist the country already knew he was.
Candi Cakes-Trump could be seen next to her husband at every Bills home game of the 2017 season as the team finished the 7–9.
2018
Donald Trump was always a vocal proponent of Tom Brady, even as an owner of a rival team. He was once widely criticized for praising a 4 touchdown performance by Brady against the Bills in 2016. However, even that couldn’t prepare the football world for the trade the Bills made for Tom Brady in 2018…
It was once inconceivable that the New England Patriots could ever trade the inimitable Tom Brady. The goofy looking kid from Michigan who became the patron saint of Boston was like a Greek god to those in that part of the country. But this God among men happened to have an Achilles’ heel of his own: His Tom Brady Knee.
In the third game of the 2017 season, playing against the Houston Texans, Tom Brady was being sacked by 2 defensive lineman when his left knee buckled under their weight in as far the wrong direction it is possible for a knee to go. It is a gruesome video, please don’t look it up. He tore an alphabet’s worth of “CL’s” and was sidelined for the rest of the season. It was a night of mourning for the city of Boston and New England as a whole.
But how soon a city forgets…
Jimmy Garoppolo went on to lead the Patriots to an unlikely Superbowl win against the Philadelphia Eagles. The city of Boston rejoiced at their good fortune and began the worship of a new sports deity. But as the confetti was still falling in the streets of downtown Boston, it seemed the curtain was finally closing on the career of Tom Brady…
Until Donald Trump did the unthinkable.
On May, 3rd 2018 Donald Trump ordered his general manager (Donald Trump Jr, in case you had forgotten) to trade away 5 of the teams coveted first round draft picks (2 for 2018, 2021, 2023, and 1 for 2025) to the Patriots. All for Tom Brady. Despite it being clear Tom Brady would never be the same player again. Despite the fact that he missed the majority of the 2017 season and would miss half the 2018 season.
While Boston celebrated, Buffalo lamented. Their hopes and dreams of a bright future collapsing around them like a dying star.
2019
2019 was another memorable year for the city of Buffalo. It was the year that Donald Trump did one of the most Donald Trump things of his tenure. He put the Bills through an extensive, and expensive, rebranding of the team.
Trump often complained that “Bills” was not a patriotic enough name for an American football team, and that they needed to better represent the “greatest country on Earth” (A country he regularly complained about on social media). So, without any fanfare at all, Donald Trump announced that the Buffalo Bills would henceforth be known as the Buffalo Uncle Sams.
While this name change was obviously a marketing stunt to counter a steady decline in ticket sales, there was something poetic about the new mascot of Donald Trump’s football team being an old white man using propaganda to pander to the patriotism of Americans he pretends to care about.
Ironic was another word used to describe Trump’s new football team as he famously dodged the draft to go to war in Vietnam because of “bone spurs.”
The city of Buffalo couldn’t complain about the rebrand for long because, miraculously, the 2019 season was the first year of Donald Trump’s tenure as owner that his team made the playoffs.
In Tom Brady’s first full year starting for the Uncle Sams, he was able to lead the team to a 10–6 record, just barely sneaking in to the wild card round of the playoffs. Not only did they make the playoffs, but they won their first game, defeating the Baltimore Ravens 42–10 behind a career performance from Tom Brady. Buffalo fans finally felt it was time to shed the brown paper bags of shame and begin to fully support the Uncle Sams.
Unfortunately, this newfound pride in their team was short lived. In the divisional round of the playoffs against the Kansas City Chiefs, the very same opponents from Tom Brady’s 2008 ACL tear, fate showed its terrible sense of irony… Tom Brady suffered another catastrophic left knee injury. The Uncle Sams lost the game, ending Trump’s dreams of the Lombardi Trophy sitting in his office at the top of Trump Tower.
Tom Brady announced his retirement from the NFL the next week.
2020
In 2020 the NFL made history when the New York Jets became the first team in any of the 3 major sports leagues to sign a woman. Kicker Kelsi Valentine played collegiate soccer for Duke, but gained the attention of NFL scouts when she went viral for posting videos kicking incredible trick shots with a football, as well as consistently hitting 55+ yard field goals.
After her signing, Donald Trump weighed in with sexist comments, telling reporters that while Kelsi is good looking, he was worried that she was “too delicate for the NFL.” He went on to say that “even if her videos are real, an NFL field is a whole lot different than the backyard.”
In week 13 of the 2020 season, the New York Jets defeated the Buffalo Uncle Sams 23–20 after a 47-yard field goal from Valentine as time expired. Donald Trump wasn’t seen in public for 3 days.
2021
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE was becoming something of an epidemic for the NFL by 2021. More and more former players were showing signs and symptoms of the disease, with almost all of the research showing definitively that a career of playing football was the sole cause. While the NFL and Roger Goodell continued to do nothing but funnel money into research only to downplay the results, Donald Trump thought even that was too much.
In one of his most famous statements outside Trump Tower, Trump had this to say: “CTE is just a hoax the fake news media is running with to try and take profits away from the great NFL. Football is perfectly safe, and men have been playing it for 100 years with no problem. We are spending too much money on research, losing big time. Maybe Trump for commissioner? Anything can happen.”
This statement caused quite a stir, as it was surprising to many that Donald Trump would suggest taking the job of a man who had defended his antics and scandals so spinelessly over the years. It was also surprising because commissioner of the NFL was a far cry from his not so secret plans to one day run for the presidency.
Ultimately, like many of men’s best (or worst) laid plans, neither of these bids at leadership would come to fruition.
2022
On the morning of October 2nd, 2022, just shy of 8 years after taking control of the Bills/Uncle Sams organization, and as rumors of his long hinted at presidential run were heating up, Donald Trump died alone in his Trump Tower office. Coroner’s reports suggest that Trump choked to death on an Egg McMuffin, one of the three he ate for breakfast every morning. A few employees actually heard Trump’s cries for help, but did not intervene. The guttural screams and pounding of the desk were, as one security guard put it, “no different than the sounds of his morning calls on any other day”
Candi Cakes-Trump did not attend the funeral. She was seen on a yacht in the Caribbean popping bottles of champagne.
While certainly seen as a tragedy to tens of people, most everyone else, especially the people of Buffalo saw it as a befitting bookend to the most tempestuous period in NFL history.
