If there’s one thing that Doug Flutie’s retirement proved this week, it’s the fact that time has done nothing to heal the wounds suffered by Buffalo Bills fans in the ongoing and always lively and enthusiastic Flutie versus Rob Johnson debate.
I feel sorry for the younger Bills fans who can’t appreciate the intensity of the argument that began in the late 1990s when quarterbacks Johnson and Flutie first emerged on the Western New York scene.
Fresh off the Jim Kelly versus Frank Reich debate that paled in comparison — but existed nonetheless in the years leading up to Kelly’s and Reich’s retirements — the uproar over who the Bills’ new starting QB should be in the next era was far less cut and dry.
There was always a good case to be made for each player:
n Flutie, the Heisman Trophy-winning miracle worker with an intoxicating love of the game.
n Johnson, the man with all the tools, especially the proper height and a golden arm.
The debate began the moment the Bills named Johnson the starter before the start of the 1998 season. Johnson stumbled (literally), Flutie took over the starting spot and the team started winning. The debate then carried over into the following season and spread out quickly to the rest of the country.
Arguments raged day and night, by not only avid football fans, but casual ones as well, including housewives, grandmothers, farmers, businessmen, holy men, teachers, judges and politicians. Everyone — even the guy standing next to you waiting for the bus, or the lady serving you two eggs over easy and a side of white toast, or your five-year-old daughter — had an opinion on the matter.
How either Flutie or Johnson played from one week to the next also did little to diminish the intensity of our partisan allegiance, because most importantly, you either liked one or the other. No one liked both. You neither hated both. It was always one or the other.
Nothing. Not their separate post-Buffalo Bills careers, not their insistence that time together on the Bills was a long and forgotten saga in their lives, nor the passage of time have ever altered our perspective of how we viewed them, which is — ironically — collectively.
The departure of both Flutie and Johnson and the emergence of Drew Bledsoe as the Bills new (and only) quarterback temporarly put the Flutie-Johnson debate to rest, but even Drew couldn’t erase them from our minds. Flutie’s announced retirement this week proved it again.
I found it astonishing how grown men and women in their 40s, 50s and 60s took up sides in the newsroom this past week with just the mention of Flutie’s name. The presidential debates, the economy, the price of gas, not even the smoking ban, generated more intense vocal outbursts.
How unfortunate that two talented players could leave such a distorted legacy, but that’s how we’ll always remember Flutie — and Johnson. Their rivalry and its negative and long-lasting impact.
Contact John D’Onofrio at 439-9222 Ext. 6247 or donofrioj@gnnewspaper.com.
Sports
JOHN D'ONOFRIO: Flutie-Johnson debate rages on
COMMENTARY
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