Much focus on the new stadium.
For the Buffalo Bills,
there is a new book out featuring a bit
of a history lesson on how we got here.
It's titled Nowhere Else You'd Rather Be
50 Years of Cherished comebacks, concerts,
and classic moments in Orchard Park.
It covers not only the star
athletes who have played at the
stadium over the past five decades,
from Jim Kelly to Josh Allen,
but also other sporting events like
the first ever Winter Classic,
plus rock shows and other major events.
The 176 page book features photos
and stories from the Buffalo News.
And joining us live tonight
is Corey Desiderio,
content manager and editor of
special sections at the newspaper and
editor of this new book. Here it is.
Thanks so much for coming in.
And you know,
I've lived in Western New York for
a long time, but not a native here.
And I learned a ton about the
history of this.
And that's kind of where I want to start,
including the renderings that you got
when when they were discussing building
what is now a 50 year old stadium.
You have me as someone
who was born in the 90s.
I didn't know anything past,
you know, in the 70s and 80s when
they were sort of discussing this.
So it really is a true history,
you know, lesson dating back 50 years
ago this year from when they moved
from War Memorial Stadium in downtown
Buffalo out to Rich Stadium in OP.
Yeah, those pictures.
And you can see what what our
viewers are seeing there.
I mean, a lot of people
probably never seen this stuff.
Yeah, this is a It took about
three months of searching through
the archives of the Buffalo News,
both print and we have
some digital archives too.
So we pulled everything that may have
not even appeared in the paper and
we're documenting in this book here.
Yeah, I love it.
The name of this stadium is of course
changed a lot over the years. Rich Stadium.
Ralph Wilson Stadium, New Era Field.
Been back to just Bill Stadium for
a while now now High Mark Stadium.
And for a lot of people though,
some of the best memories there
were during the Super Bowl era.
Right. You get it into a lot
here about the the Bill Storied
history at the stadium.
Absolutely.
We used some stories from
Mark On and Jay Skursky.
They helped and contributed to this project.
They really combined and talked,
talked us through the eras of the
bill's history, those five decades,
how they sort of intertwined how
decisions made by the front office in
the later years of the 80s contributed
to those glory years of the 90s.
So it's not just photos and archive content,
but it is a storyline that sort of connects
all the past 50 years up until today.
Yeah, even some stats in there is
interesting to see how Jim Kelly
performed at that stadium versus Josh
Allen and a bunch of different stuff.
Also, I mean, we think of a football
stadium as being a place where
you watch football games, right?
But you know, the stadium has
been a lot more than that.
And we've recently seen just in the past,
I don't know, decade or so,
like these big outdoor concerts coming back.
But that used to happen back
in the day as well.
I mean and we'll show
some more pictures here,
walk us through the the non NFL
games that have happened here.
Yeah,
absolutely. The big one is the winner
Classic, the first ever outdoor
game in the US and obviously a few
years ago was the World Juniors
game between the US and Canada.
But then in addition to that,
like you said, the concerts dating
back to the first year was open and
there was a run of couple years,
really Grateful Dead played
every 4th of July.
I've heard a lot about those types of shows.
So, you know,
there's a lot of stories of The
Rolling Stones who've played
there five times and even The
Who have been there as well.
So a lot more than just football
history at the stadium.
We showed the picture there.
When the The Who was there
so many decades ago?
I saw, oh shoot, what's his
name? Not not the piano Man.
Who's the other one? No Piano Man.
What's this? Billy Joel. Thank you.
That's terrible. I saw Billy Joel,
great concert.
I couldn't think of his name.
Finally you kind of end with as
we're ending this 50 year chapter
moving on to the next right.
And what's going to
happen across the street.
Yeah, for sure. The last chapter of
the book is all about the new stadium
that's going to be opening up in 2026
right across the street in the last.
One of the last photos in the book is
from that June groundbreaking ceremony.
So it really does tie in from when they
moved there 50 years ago up until,
you know, the happenings. Just.
Yeah. Last couple months.
Yeah. And there is, again,
there's a look at the cover of the book.
It's on sale right now.
That's the long sort of URL,
but it's Buffalo News store.com.
And then you Scroll down just a
little bit and you can see it
there if you want to purchase.
And then you you were saying
it showed up on Barnes and
Noble too? Did. Yeah. Another option. I saw
a Facebook post last week
sort of as a surprise to us.
And my mom checked out our local
Barnes and Noble last week.
So you could get it in person.
Yeah. There
you go. Perfect.
That Cory Desert area with the
Buffalo News editor of this new book?
Nowhere else you'd rather be.
It's it's great stuff.
I learned a lot.
Thanks for coming in.
I appreciate you having me.