By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

Tom Day – Signed by the Bills in 1960

It took Tom Day a few years to settle in the right spot at the right time as a football player. Once he did, he became a champion.

Day was an original draft choice of the Bills who signed with the St. Louis Cardinals instead in 1960. He lasted a year as a backup lineman there before he was released. The Bills still remembered him and signed him to an AFL contract. He spent two seasons as a guard before coach Lou Saban moved him to defensive end.

That made all the difference. “Tippy” – one of the most beloved characters in Bills history – became a part of two AFL champions in 1964 and 1965. He held his own on a superb defensive line that also included Tom Sestak and Ron McDole. Day was traded to San Diego for Keith Lincoln in 1967, but the North Carolina A&T product returned for one last season in 1968.

Here is more about Tom:

(Follow Budd on Twitter @WDX2BB)

Budd Bailey

Budd Bailey has been involved in almost every aspect of the local sports scene for the last 40 years. He worked for WEBR Radio, the Buffalo Sabres' public relations department and The Buffalo News during that time. In that time he covered virtually every aspect of the area's sports world, from high schools to the Bills and Sabres and everything in between. Along the way, Budd served as a play-by-play announcer for the Bisons, an analyst for the Stallions, and a talk-show host. He won the National Lacrosse League's Tom Borrelli Award as the media personality of the year in 2011, and was a finalist for that same award in 2017. Budd's seventh and eighth books, one on the Transcontinental Railroad and the other about Ichiro Suzuki, are scheduled to be released in the fall.

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