The "Flying Steve" ESPN Story: 1st Buffalo Bills TableJumper
Donation protected
#LOOKATTHISIDIOT
#BillsMafia and Buffalo Bills fans around the world............The time has come to thank and support a man whose leap off the back of a pickup truck back in 2015, ignited (or reignited) a movement in Bills country, while at the same time contributing to 2 Orthopedic Hospitals in the Rochester and Buffalo, NY areas.
As featured on ESPN's Sportscenter back in 2015, this is the REAL story of how jumping through tables became a Buffalo Bills thing!
This story is about a family man (husband and father) who is employed (in a career that while heartwarming and positively impactful on society, he prefers to keep private), and who will be from now on identified as "Flying Steve". As "Flying Steve's" friend, I want to give a big thank you to him for agreeing 9.5 years after the fact to share his version of events that led to him being publicly shamed on ESPN.
With all the publicity and non-factual myths out there about when jumping through tables at Bills tailgates became a thing, I felt it was time to share his story and help he and his family benefit from his pioneering leap. I will do so in a kinder way than Scott Van Pelt did on ESPN's Sportscenter when he showed Flying Steve for the first time back in October of 2015 and uttered the soon to be famous words “LOOK AT THIS IDIOT”.
While tailgating before the Buffalo Bills game on October 4, 2015, Flying Steve and his friends decided to run into their food table, and it eventually ended up falling over and breaking. Their tailgating neighbors were laughing at their antics and Flying Steve uttered the words that would forever change what Bills tailgating was.
He said, "I can break your table too........I'll even jump off a car onto it". With their approval, Steve, put down his lemonade and took to, fittingly the tailgate of a pickup, and launched his body through the air and right through the table..............thereby CHANGING BILLS TAILGATING FOREVER!
The actual video of Flying Steve made its way to www.deadspin.com and if memory serves him correctly within hours it had nearly 200,000 views.
While the video is no longer up, here is a link to the original article from October 4, 2015.
Deadspin | Bills Fan Submits His Audition For WWE
and their Twitter post at the time showing link to above article
Deadspin on X:
"VIDEO: Bills fan submits his audition for WWE https://x.com/Deadspin/status/651047645511860224
The video gathered steam as it was shared all over the world, and 2 nights later, on October 6th, 2015 ESPN Sportscenter anchor Scott Van Pelt alongside "Stanford" Steve Coughlin, aired the clip that changed the path of Buffalo Bills tailgating forever.
Please click here to view it:
Flying Steve has not benefitted from table endorsements, free hot food at tailgates, Bills tickets or anything. #Billsmafia now is your time to shine. Let's thank "Flying Steve" and help he and his family out for sparking actions that have entertained us for the past almost 10 years. Let's show this die-hard Bills fans that he is NOT AN IDIOT and shouldn't have been publicly humiliated on Sportscenter and instead should be hailed as a modern-day Superman.
Let’s repay this modest modern day tailgating hero by making a donation here with 75% of the donation going to the local WNY Orthopedic Hospitals listed below and 25% going to Flying Steve's family as a thank you to him for taking flight back in 2015.
Scott Van Pelt.......Flying Steve has feelings! Looking forward to your donation and help publicizing this sir!!
The charities that will receive 75% of the donations are:
UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER MEDICAL CENTER: THE SAUNDERS CENTER FOR ORTHOPAEDICS & PHYSICAL PERFORMANCE
AND
UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO UBMD
ORTHOPAEDICS & SPORTS MEDICINE
Organizer
Flying Steve
Organizer
Rochester, NY