ORCHARD PARK–In the days before the 2025 American Football Conference championship game between the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs, there circulated many spoofs humorously suggesting that National Football League referees were in cahoots with the Chiefs.

Yes, you saw them, didn’t you?

You saw, for example, spoof photos of referees wearing not black and white stripes but red and white stripes with the Chiefs’ insignia on the shirts.

You saw spoof movies of referees making calls favoring the Chiefs.

Although the spoofs were–and continue to be–funny, no one created them from nothing. For example: Following the 2025 divisional-round-playoff game between the Houston Texans and the Chiefs, referees were themselves called for bad calls favoring the Chiefs.

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Following the 2025 AFC championship game, two new phrases can join “No Goal” in Western New York professional-sports lore.

“No Goal,” you’ll recall, is from a Stanley Cup finals game during which the Buffalo Sabres’ opponents received–not scored but received–a goal that wasn’t a goal.

It just wasn’t.

Now the two new phrases are “No Catch” and “The Spot.”

�–� As for “No Catch”: No one has to know all NFL rules to understand this: When, during a pass, the ball hits the ground before a player has control of the ball, the play is over. There can be no catch by the offense. There can be no interception by the defense.

Nevertheless, during the 2025 AFC championship game, referees on the field credited the Chiefs with a catch after the ball hit the ground.

Off to the replay the referees went. Even after the replay, the call on the field stood. It was easy to see that was wrong. It wasn’t a close call.

Not at all.

�–� As for “The Spot”: Once when the Bills went for it on fourth and short, one referee signaled a first down for the Bills, and another signaled the Bills were short. The referees on the field went with the call favoring the Chiefs.

Off to the replay the referees went. Even after the replay, the call on the field stood. It was easy to see that was wrong. Again, it wasn’t a close call.

Not at all.

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A high-ranking person in the NFL has dismissed as “a ridiculous theory” a suggestion that referees favor the Chiefs.

Never mind that this person should have had enough public-relations sense not to refer to such a concern as “a ridiculous theory.”

It’s one thing to say a theory is “ridiculous.” It’s another thing to say it’s false.

Or to put it more precisely: Saying a theory is “ridiculous” isn’t quite the same as saying it’s false.

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Yet let’s assume, just for purposes of today’s column, that the “theory” is false.

That is, let’s assume the bad calls were just mistakes. After all, mistakes–including mistaken calls–can happen.

Now ask yourself this: Just how many more mistaken calls favoring the Chiefs does it take before a substantial number of NFL fans from across the country–not just Western New York–first question and then doubt the falsity of the “theory”?

It’s only a matter of time and enough additional bad calls. Then what?

Meanwhile, what do the bad calls “accomplish”? Well, for one thing, they feed conspiracy theories: Playing the Chiefs shouldn’t mean playing the Chief-Referees.

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And meanwhile, none of the bad calls diminishes what everyone in the Bills’ family–players, coaches, management, and, yes, fans–accomplished during the 2024 season.

Therein lies the ultimate point of today’s column.

Nor do any of the bad calls change what you, faithful reader of this column, saw affirmed here four weeks ago: The Bills and the Bills’ fans have earned the ultimate victory.

Not entirely because of bad calls, yet in no small measure because of bad calls, it won’t happen in 2025.

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The only sports-fan letter Randy Elf has ever written was to Marv Levy, who wrote back to express his thanks and to say that he liked the enclosed Winston Churchill poster so much that he had it framed and mounted on his office wall at the stadium.

COPYRIGHT © 2025 BY RANDY ELF