why are buffalo bills called bills

The Buffalo Bills are called “Bills” because the team was originally named after the famous Wild West showman Buffalo Bill Cody, not after the animal bison or paper bills.

Origin of the name

• In the 1940s, Buffalo’s All-America Football Conference team was first called the Bisons, a common local sports nickname.

• The owner, James Breuil, held a “name the team” contest to find something more distinctive and tied to frontier imagery.

• The winning entry suggested “Buffalo Bills,” drawing a parallel between the city of Buffalo and Buffalo Bill Cody, a legendary frontiersman and showman.

How the current NFL team got it

• That AAFC team, renamed the Buffalo Bills, folded in 1949, but the nickname stuck in local sports culture.

• When Ralph Wilson started the new AFL franchise in 1959–1960, he revived the “Buffalo Bills” name rather than inventing a totally new one.

• So today’s NFL Bills inherit their name from that earlier team, which itself honored Buffalo Bill Cody.

Who was Buffalo Bill Cody?

• William “Buffalo Bill” Cody was a 19th‑century American scout and soldier who became famous for his traveling show, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

• His persona symbolized the romanticized American frontier—exactly the rugged, adventurous image the owner wanted the team name to evoke.

Fun extra tidbit

• A barbershop quartet called “The Buffalo Bills” also took its name from Buffalo Bill Cody around the same time, which sometimes adds a playful layer to fan discussions, but the football name traces back to Cody himself, not the quartet.

TL;DR: The “Bills” in Buffalo Bills comes from Buffalo Bill Cody’s name, chosen in a fan contest to give Buffalo’s team a unique, Wild West–themed identity that later carried over to the modern NFL franchise.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.