Bisons

Buffalo's football side did not start life under the Bisons name at all. It began in 1920 as the Buffalo All-Americans. Frank McNeil ran the club through its first four seasons before ownership passed to Tommy Hughitt and Warren D. Patterson, and it was under that new ownership, in 1924, that the team took the name Bisons. It kept the name through 1925, dropped it for a single season as the Buffalo Rangers in 1926, then wore it again from 1927 to 1929, playing in black, orange and white at grounds including Buffalo Baseball Park and what became Offermann Stadium. Swede Youngstrom and Pete Calac were among those who lined up for the club before the money ran out and the franchise folded after the 1929 season.

The name did not stay retired for long. In 1946 it returned for a Buffalo entry in the newly formed All-America Football Conference, this side turned out in royal blue, silver and white rather than the old black and orange, and it played not at Offermann but at War Memorial Stadium. George Terlep quarterbacked a team that finished 3-10-1 in its only season under that name before the club was renamed the Buffalo Bills for 1947.

Neither Bisons side ever won a championship, and neither lasted long enough to try again under that name: the first ran out of money, the second simply ran out of its own name.