- Buffalo Bills fans are celebrating their AFC Divisional Round playoff victory by donating thousands of dollars to charity.
- The twist? The charity is ‘Blessings in a Backpack’–a favorite charity of Lamar Jackson, the QB of the Baltimore Ravens.
- The Bills beat the Ravens 17-3 on Saturday.
Sports fans in general and and NFL fans in particular are often stereotype as drunken, obnoxious degenerates. Some fan bases have more of this reputation than others. Prior to their move to Las Vegas, the Oakland Raiders fanbase may have embodied this persona more than any team’s boosters. The Buffalo Bills fans–aka ‘Bills Mafia’ are definitely drunken and obnoxious but degenerates…not so much.
The Bills are headed to the AFC Conference Championship following a 17-3 win over the Baltimore Ravens on Saturday. Obviously, the ‘Bills Mafia’ is stoked about their best playoff run since the days of Jim Kelly. They’ve chosen a somewhat surprising and downright classy way to celebrate their victory. Their celebrating by donating to charity. More specifically, they’re donating to the favorite charity of Lamar Jackson–the quarterback for the team they beat on Saturday.
Jackson left Saturday’s game in the third quarter due to a concussion. After the game, Bills fans started snooping around trying to get information on Jackson. Not to troll him or ‘dox’ him–they went to Reddit to track down his favorite charity which turns out to be the Louisville Chapter of ‘Blessings in a Backpack’–that’s a nonprofit helping to feed children during the COVID-19 pandemic who may have lost access to free meals due to school shutdowns.
As of Saturday night, the charity had received over 2,500 individual donations totaling over $75,000. Since the story gained considerable traction on Sunday there’s every reason to think that the final tally of Bills Mafia donations could be considerably more than that. Here’s one of the Tweets that started the donations expressing a ridiculously classy sentiment:
Now some Baltimore fans are trying to start a similar move in the other direction sharing links to Bills’ quarterback Josh Allen’s favorite charity, the John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo. Overall, just a really nice exchange of respect between two passionate fanbases.
