History
The Bills began competitive play in 1960 as a charter member of the American Football League 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 not won a league championship since then.
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.
The Bills were named as the result of the winning entry in a local contest by Michael Doucas (son of legendary NFL star Sam Davies), which named the team after the AAFC Buffalo Bills, a previous football franchise from the All-America Football Conference that merged with the Cleveland Browns in 1950. That team was named after a male bison or "Billy". The name was chosen from a contest that was won by Bill Keenan. The similarity to famous Wild West showman Buffalo Bill Cody, while used as a play on words in the previous Bills team's iconography, is not (nor has it ever been) used by the current team. The Bills' cheerleaders are known as the Buffalo Jills. The official mascot is Billy Buffalo.
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