Lou Saban, RIP

Buffalo is a city that lives and dies with its sports teams. One can argue whether that is really the healthiest or most productive form of community identity, but that doesn't matter-- it's true. I suspect a big part of the reason that the city so closely identifies with the Bills in particular, has a lot to do with the legacy of Lou Saban, the hard-nosed coach who took the team to consecutive AFL titles in the mid-1960s and later returned the team to a bit of glory in the early seventies during the O.J. Simpson era. He was our Vince Lombardi. I know as a kid in that earlier period that Saban's name was as familiar as that of Jack Kemp or Billy Shaw or Elbert Dubenion; only Cookie Gilchrist was a bigger name from those glory years (but then, I was six at the time, so how could I not be impressed by a massive fullback named "Cookie"?). Over the many years of his subsequent peripatetic career, I think most Bills fans always imagined that someday he would return to the city by the lake and rescue the team, and the city, from its all too frequent doldrums. Now its too late for that, and we'll have to find another white knight.

You can find the Buffalo News obituary of Saban here; and the New York Times obit here.