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The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area. The team is a member of the East division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The team plays their home games at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park, New York. The Bills are the only NFL team that plays its home games in New York State. (The New York Giants and New York Jets play at MetLife Stadium, located in East Rutherford, New Jersey). The Bills conduct summer training camp at St. John Fisher College in Pittsford, New York, an eastern suburb of Rochester. The Bills began play as an original franchise of the American Football League (AFL) in 1960. The club joined the NFL as a result of the AFL–NFL merger for the 1970 season. The 1964 and 1965 Bills were the only teams representing Buffalo that won major league professional sports championships ("back-to-back" American Football League Championships). The Bills are the only team to win four consecutive conference championships and are the only NFL team to play in four consecutive Super Bowl games. The team was owned by Ralph Wilson from the team's founding in 1960, until his death in 2014 at the age of 95. After his death, Wilson's estate reached an agreement to sell the team to Terry and Kim Pegula, which was approved by the other NFL team owners on October 8, 2014. The team has featured many of the league's most prominent and popular players, including QB Jack Kemp, FB Cookie Gilchrist, G Bob Kalsu, RB O. J. Simpson, DE Bruce Smith, QB Jim Kelly, RB Thurman Thomas, and WR Andre Reed. The Bills have the longest active playoff drought in any major professional sport: they have not made the playoffs since 1999 and are the only team that has not appeared in the NFL playoffs so far in the 21st century.〔http://espn.go.com/blog/buffalo-bills/post/_/id/21143/bills-now-have-longest-current-playoff-drought-among-major-sports〕 ==History== The Bills began competitive play in 1960 as a charter member of the American Football League led by head coach Buster Ramsey and joined the NFL as part of the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. The Bills won two consecutive American Football League titles in 1964 and 1965, but the club has yet to win a league championship since. Once the AFL–NFL merger took effect, the Bills became the second NFL team to represent the city; they followed the Buffalo All-Americans, a charter member of the league. Buffalo had been left out of the league since the All-Americans (by that point renamed the Bisons) folded in 1929; the Bills were no less than the third professional non-NFL team to compete in the city before the merger, following the Indians/Tigers of the early 1940s and another team named the Bills in the late 1940s. Buffalo’s team in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) in 1946 was the Bisons. In 1947 a contest was held to rename the team, which was owned by James Breuil of the Frontier Oil Company. The winning entry suggested Bills, reflecting on the famous western frontiersman, Buffalo Bill Cody. Carrying the “frontier” theme further, the winning contestant further offered that the team was being supported by Frontier Oil and was “opening a new frontier in sports in Western New York.” When Buffalo joined the new American Football League in 1960, the name of the city’s earlier pro football entry was adopted.〔http://www.profootballhof.com/history/nicknames.aspx#sthash.fZkeALva.dpuf〕 After being pushed to the brink of failure in the mid-1980s, the collapse of the United States Football League and a string of high draft picks allowed the Bills to rebuild into a perennial contender in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, a period in which the team won four consecutive AFC Championships; the team nevertheless lost all four subsequent Super Bowls, records in both categories that still stand. The rise of the division rival New England Patriots under Tom Brady, along with numerous failed attempts at rebuilding in the 2000s (decade), have prevented the Bills from reaching the playoffs since 1999, a 15-year drought that is the longest active playoff drought in the league. On October 8, 2014, Terry and Kim Pegula received unanimous approval to acquire the Bills during the NFL owner's meetings. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Buffalo Bills」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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