They were named for a vaudeville show
Because the Buffalo Bisons were already spoken for,
But that hardly explains one Elbert D. "Golden Wheels" Dubenion
From miniscule Bluffton College to be beckoned in black face
To the first playbill will call for a casting coach named Buster
With Carlton, Wray; Torczon, LaVerne; Fowler, Willmer; Yoho, Mack ...
Impossible names all, even for vaudeville
When they shuffle off the mortal coil
Of Buffalo's defunct and defiant ghosts of football.
Because the Buffalo Bisons were already spoken for,
But that hardly explains one Elbert D. "Golden Wheels" Dubenion
From miniscule Bluffton College to be beckoned in black face
To the first playbill will call for a casting coach named Buster
With Carlton, Wray; Torczon, LaVerne; Fowler, Willmer; Yoho, Mack ...
Impossible names all, even for vaudeville
When they shuffle off the mortal coil
Of Buffalo's defunct and defiant ghosts of football.
They never knew they were dead, you see,
Always thinking they were in it when they weren't.
It's not the same to beat the shit out of the other pigskin misfits
As ride the golden steeds of the football gods,
As merciless and clean as they were sexy, as this crew --
Archie and Butch and Booker and Stew --
The penitents of Lou -- most assuredly were not.
And then there was Cookie, washed out with the Argonauts
For his too-cool-for Canada's dry three goose wings down,
Proof you can liquefy a cookie, to minstrel show juice.
He came with Ernie Warlick - a name I didn't make up -
To try their luck down South in the impossible TV snow
That brought light to Niagara's honeymooner cabins
And the arc welding eyes of the Lackawanna Poles,
The factory negroes, the Erie Irish, the Alsatians
Who came in on the wind. They agreed on nothing
But the Bills, how truly disappointing they were,
And how they still prefer Pepsi 2 to 1 to Coke and think
The Bavarian creme pies on the East Side are the best in the world.
The world. Yes they want a taste of the misery of glory but
No one had anything to give, only the glory of misery.
Still they took so tiny a slot in the prime time machine,
They only took, even from the mythical Buffalo, the urge to run.
Still they took so tiny a slot in the prime time machine,
They only took, even from the mythical Buffalo, the urge to run.
That's where Cookie came in, never crumbling,
Even at contract time, when Buffalo wingback payback
Made it apparent at last just how far Buffalo's light had cast,
The first Tesla-electrified city so they say,
And he was cast to the woeful Bronco winds
As was Daryl "the Mad Bomber" Lamonica
Presented for peanuts and a harmonica
To the Al Davis monkey vendor, as Jack the quarterback
Became, because he could not be the hero of this play,
A Republican intellectual who ran for President
On an "I'm a quarterback" plank, but no one by that time
Even remembered him.
What travelling show can't encompass such tragedy?
Their brothers in guerilla war rode the bouncing Super Bowl
To respectability and riches while they still
Stirred the cream of a post-Cookie apocalypse.
They changed their stadium from War to Rich
After the types of sweets at the sponsor's bakery.
And no one was ever sweeter than the man they called OJ,
The rich rookie who raced through the house that Cookie built
And whose father was the souest chef in Frisco Bay,
And if it wasn't for the love of his son, not able to be
White man cool like his heterosexual celebrity dad,
Carrying his pig-skinning chef knives to maul his great white stepmother,
We would be able to remember him,
The juice in the Electric Company, a light on TV,
The way he made us forget, for a moment,
That it mattered he was black.
