The Buffalo Bills fan base continue to be the best fans in the entire country.
Bills Mafia is back at it again, flooding a charity with donations, but this time it was for a good and hilarious reason. The donations are in $17 increments to a Buffalo non-profit called VIA: Visually Impaired Advancement.
The donations are basically a shot at the refs after the Bills’ Sunday night game in Tampa Bay, where fans felt there were many missed calls that cost the road team the victory.
VIA vision education specialist, Ray Zylinski said to 7ABC’s Pheben Kassahun, “When somebody comes together and donates to VIA, it goes to help not just one person, not just two people but the visually impaired community, and then the visually impaired community from that support, goes out into the community and helps others. It’s just an amazing thing to have one donation come through and then starts this cascade of giving.”
“You know, it’s nothing new for the Bills. We’ve always gotten calls that were difficult,” Zylinski said. “We have such a large community of supporters here and whether that be supporting the Bills as fans or supporting local nonprofit organizations like VIA: Visually Impaired Advancement, that’s really what I love most.”
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“It was interesting because when I saw the donation, I thought, ‘Oh wait, what is $17?’ And then I saw the message behind it and I was a little bit confused and then I put two-and-two together of, ‘Oh my gosh. This is for the refs, and Hunter had that funny thing of, ‘to stop referee blindness.’ I go, ‘Oh my gosh. How tongue and cheek of him to really go for this. Then, whenever I saw the $17, I called our development director and I said, ‘Hey, what is this,?'” VIA marketing and communications manager, Samantha Burfiend said. “We are getting inundated in the minute. So, as I’ve been talking to people. We’re at least getting one or two every couple of minutes. We’re really hoping for a good turnout from this, but it has been quite the extreme, especially since it got onto Twitter.”
The Buccaneers benefited from a questionable pass interference call on Mike Evans in overtime that moved them up 19 yards. The call came not long after the Bills were forced to settle for a game-tying field goal after a similar play did not result in a pass interference penalty for Stefon Diggs. That missed call could’ve set them up for a game winning touchdown. Instead, the game got sent to overtime and the Bills lost.
