Buffalo Bills Fans Have It Tough, Especially in Antarctica

Last updated: February 5, 2025 2:53 pm

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At an Antarctic Research Base, Football Is a Tether to Home

Research scientists in remote locations need to get creative in order to follow their favorite teams, even when they don’t like the outcomes.

Palmer Station is a tiny American research base in Antarctica — and a temporary home to several Bills fans. Credit… Eitan Abramovich/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Published Feb. 4, 2025 Updated Feb. 5, 2025

For about a week leading up to the A.F.C. championship game, Meredith Nolan had been living on a hulking research vessel parked in an Antarctic port. The ship, called the Noosfera, had been waiting for favorable sea conditions before plowing into the icy waters below the southern tip of South America.

It was late January, and Nolan was headed home after spending three months at Palmer Station, a tiny American research base in Antarctica.

She had been studying the effects of climate change on zooplankton, and, in her spare moments, cheering for her favorite football team, the Buffalo Bills. She wore a beanie with a Bills logo on the front and a blue poof on top when she went out on a boat to collect zooplankton in nets, or hiked the receding glacier behind the station. Her hat alerted two other Bills fans that she was one of them.

In some ways, she did not behave like a typical Bills fan, causing joyful chaos and destruction to celebrate the team.

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When Meredith Nolan isn’t studying the effects of climate change on zooplankton, she is rooting on the Buffalo Bills. Credit… Meredith Nolan “We’ll see if Meredith starts diving through tables,” Ricky Robbins, who was there studying seabirds, said in reference to a popular activity among fans at Bills tailgates.

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