Why Bills Mafia Showcases ‘What Sport Is’

Three students and their professor photograph Buffalo’s communal joy amid a year of heartbreak.

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The Kren family hangs out in their garage as they wait for the Buffalo Bills game to start / Abby Curtis

Clay Patrick McBride, 54, has been photographing Sports Illustrated covers and stories for nearly 20 years. He has worked for publications including ESPN, Rolling Stone and New York Magazine, plus other big name companies like Disney, Nike and Sony Music. But it wasn’t until McBride was in his 40s that he became “swept up” by teaching, he says, giving him a sense of purpose beyond the world of commercial photography. It all came to fruition in December 2022, when he, now a senior lecturer at Rochester Institute of Technology, brought three of his students along with him to photograph a story for SI. McBride, along with two photojournalism students, Ariana Shchuka and Vincent Alban, and one studying advertising photography, Abby Curtis, were hired to help capture a Bills Mafia tailgate.

A detail on the jacket of Eljay Harman, 10, of Lancaster, N.Y / Vincent Alban

“Really a golden moment of teaching, where to be printed in a magazine—that to me is like, when that started happening for me, I just felt like there’s a sense of the doors opening,” McBride says. “There’s hope. And to give the students that experience, and that validation, and that credibility.”

A cardboard cutout of Bills QB Josh Allen sits atop a Buffalo street sign / Ariana Shchuka

Curtis, 21, is originally from Buffalo. During her freshman year at RIT, she did a project on the impact Bills Mafia has left on the town itself, so she had spent time photographing the tailgates and scenes at Highmark Stadium. But, she says, the photos were all the more meaningful this time around.

Buffalo Bills fans gather together while tailgating / Abby Curtis

In May, a shooter killed 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store. A deadly snow storm killed nearly 50 people in the area just days before Christmas. Less than two weeks later, cardiac arrest threatened the life of Bills safety Damar Hamlin in front of the entire fandom’s eyes. With all of that in mind, Curtis says she was grateful to have her “first big job” be something that highlighted the good in her hometown.

“It was a really scary time for Buffalo recently, and just being a part of something that can help give Buffalo a little bit more love—that just meant everything to me,” Curtis says of the photos and story, which was published Jan. 12.

Ken Johnson, or Pinto Ron as Bills Mafia knows him, earned his moniker because he grills on the hood of his 1980 Ford Pinto wagon and was misidentified as “Ron” in a magazine article 25 years ago / Abby Curtis

And Buffalo’s love was evident across the tailgate, all four photographers agreed. It’s quite the experience, filled with table-slamming, dizzy bats and shots flowing from the thumbhole of a bowling ball. But even more so, Bills Mafia has become known for its deep sense of community and charity, according to Steve Rushin’s story.

A young Bills fan gets a haircut in the parking lot :: Clay Patrick McBride/Sports Illustrated

The moments reminded McBride of a 2004 photoshoot he did, one of his early projects at SI. He was photographing a chess tournament at a New Jersey prison, and after a big celebration among the prisoners, the writer turned to him and said, “That is sport.” McBride never forgot that phrase, and he found it again in Buffalo, he says.

“I’m always just photographing the MVP or the All-Star, but sport is so much more than that, you know?” McBride says. “So that picture in the bar, to me, that writer in my head still telling me like, ‘Did you get that?’ … That’s what sport is.”

Abby Curtis

Abby Curtis

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