Throw the flag.
The Buffalo Bills are a great football team, a beloved institution in Western New York. Yet, this week, the Bills’ social-media accounts celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day while ignoring Columbus Day.The organization crossed into a zone of moral hypocrisy that must, now, be called out.
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False Start
The irony begins with the team’s own name. The Buffalo Bills were christened in the 1940s after Buffalo Bill Cody, the frontier showman who made his fame staging mock battles against Native Americans. Cody wasn’t some neutral cowboy, mind you. He was a scout in the Indian Wars, a man who actually killed Native warriors in combat and then reenacted those scenes for applause and ticket sales.
For decades, his “Wild West” show toured the country, dramatizing the conquest of the frontier and turning real human suffering into spectacle. That’s the name this team proudly carries on its helmets and jerseys. Yet in 2025, the same franchise lectures the public about historical justice and refuses to recognize Columbus Day—the only holiday that honors Italian American heritage.
Inspiration for the Buffalo Bills was William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody whose Wild West Show reenacted his triumphs over Native Americans.
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Illegal Scolding
And it’s not as if the Bills are owned by a family that lives outside of history’s contradictions. Terry Pegula, grandson of an Italian immigrant, the self-made billionaire who rescued the team from relocation, earned his fortune in oil and natural gas. His company, JKLM Energy, has been cited for more than sixty environmental violations in Pennsylvania—spills, leaks, and contaminated water tables. His previous firm, East Resources, had a similar record during the fracking boom of the 2000s.
Granted — building a business is hard. Mistakes happen. Yet, it’s galling for the same enterprise that profited from drilling—literally altering the earth—to wrap itself in moral virtue by canceling Columbus Day.
Owners of the Buffalo Bills, Terry and Ann Pegula.
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Face Mask
Then there’s Kim Pegula, Terry’s wife and co-owner, whose personal story is both inspiring and deeply American. Born in South Korea, adopted by an American family, she rose to become one of the most powerful women in professional sports. Her life is proof of what global connection makes possible—the very kind of world that began when Columbus’s voyage opened the Atlantic.
It’s simply a recognition of reality: the discovery of the New World set in motion the global exchange of people, ideas, and opportunity that ultimately made the modern United States—and the Pegulas’ own success—possible.
The team’s social-media managers may think they’re being enlightened by dropping Columbus Day, but what they’re really doing is participating in a selective moral purge: condemning one historical figure while profiting from another, and ignoring how their own prosperity is rooted in the very history they now denounce.
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No Huddle
If the Buffalo Bills want to promote inclusion, they can start by including everyone’s story. Recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Columbus Day. Acknowledge that history is complex, that the same voyage that unleashed tragedy also made possible a new world where a South Korean orphan could grow up to own an NFL franchise. That’s not erasure—that’s honesty.
The Bills’ fans come from every background imaginable: Italian American, Polish American, Irish, African-American, Native American, and more. The team unites them every Sunday. But when the franchise decides to play politics with history, it divides the very community that built it.
If you carry the name “Buffalo Bill,” you don’t get to pretend your hands are clean while lecturing the rest of us about morality. Either confront the full sweep of history or stop using it when it’s convenient.
Editor’s Note: The web site for the Buffalo Bills is https://www.buffalobills.com
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