In the Buffalo tailgating tradition, fans gather around their cars in parking lots and drink a lot of Labatt Blue beer while feasting on the food that represents the opponent. If the Bills are up against the Miami Dolphins, it’s fish.

On this day, the Bills were playing the Green Bay Packers, so cheese platters were in abundance.

As Grandma looked toward the stadium, her face turned serious. The Packers had never won a road game against Buffalo, but this time they were bringing their future Hall of Fame quarterback, Aaron Rodgers. Just the word “quarterback” causes Bills fans to stiffen a little. Early in the season, the team made a switch at that position, replacing E. J. Manuel with Kyle Orton, but he, too, had been less than dazzling.

If Grandma was sure of one thing, it was this: Whatever the Bills lacked on the field that day, they would more than make up for in the stands.

Bills fans are unabashedly fanatical. The team is a version of its underdog town, which has taken the same boom-and-bust path of other small postindustrial cities struggling to survive in the new economy. Through all of the highs and lows, Buffalo has found in the Bills an unwavering and noble cause to rally around.

It makes no difference that the Bills have not made the playoffs since 1999. Most of their home games still sell out, as did Buffalo’s coldest home game on record, against the Los Angeles Raiders in 1994, with a wind chill of minus 32 degrees. When the recent blizzard forced the team to decamp to Detroit to face the Jets, Bills fans followed suit, pouring into that stadium as well.

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that these same die-hard fans waged a campaign this year to ban Bon Jovi’s music because of rumors that the band’s frontman, Jon Bon Jovi, was interested in buying the team and moving it to Canada. (Instead, the Bills were sold for $1.4 billion to Terry and Kim Pegula, who have vowed to keep them in Buffalo.)