<P> The Bills began competitive play in 1960 as a charter member of the American Football League led by head coach Buster Ramsey 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 yet to win a league championship since . </P> <P> 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 an earlier team named the Bills, originally the Bisons, in the late 1940s in the All - America Football Conference (AAFC). </P> <P> In 1947 a contest was held to rename the Bisons, which was owned by James Breuil of the Frontier Oil Company . The winning entry suggested Bills, reflecting on the famous western frontiersman, Buffalo Bill Cody . Carrying the "frontier" theme further, the winning contestant offered the team was being supported by Frontier Oil and was "opening a new frontier in sports in Western New York ." When Buffalo joined the new American Football League in 1960, the name of the city's earlier pro football entry was adopted . </P> <P> After being pushed to the brink of failure in the mid-1980s, the collapse of the United States Football League and a series of high draft picks allowed the Bills to rebuild into a perennial contender in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, a period in which the team won four consecutive AFC Championships; the team nevertheless lost all four subsequent Super Bowls, records in both categories that still stand . </P>

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