When two men who are passionate about sports (and in particular the Buffalo Bills) get together to write a book you can be sure it’s going to be filled with details about the players and the games they played.

Springville resident Jeff Miller and former Buffalo Bills Head Coach Marv Levy recently spent six months talking to former Bills players, gathering information and formatting it all into a book called “Game Changers: The Greatest Plays in Buffalo Bills History.”

The hard-cover book scans the decades with details of plays that may or may not have changed the course of a game but are definitely worth remembering.

“It really helped me sort of reconnect with all the people, certainly the players, but it goes way beyond the players,” Levy said of the book. “I started to think about the reaction of the fans. The day they tore the goalpost down, that reawakened fond memories,” explained Levy.

The book is chock full of remarkable game moments, player reactions to those moments and information about key Buffalo Bills players.

Levy picked one decidedly memorable instance that not only changed the outcome of a game against Houston but made the difference between a win and a loss for the Bills. Many fans probably remember the game, but may have forgotten the name of the player who stalled a potential touchdown for the other team.

“There was a play that people don’t really remember very closely, but we came back from a 35-3 deficit and with three minutes left in the game went ahead 38 to 35, but that still left three minutes for Houston,” said Levy.

“People don’t remember this part of it at all. They (Houston) marched down to about our 15-yard line, threw a screen pass with 20 seconds to play and their man who received it, a guy named Lorenzo White, was off — nothing between him and the goal line­ — he’s gonna go in for the touchdown that would have won the game for them, but one of our defensive linemen who’d been knocked down rushing the passer, got up, sprinted after him, dove and tackled him at the 3-yard line. So they settled for a field goal that tied the game, sending it into overtime and we won it in overtime. But Phil Hansen is the name of the defensive linemen who made the play that is really overlooked in that game. But it was so meaningful,” Levy explained as if it happened just yesterday.

Moments like this fill the book with passion and take one back to the plays that held such meaning in the Bills history.

Miller also has memories, but his are mostly from the sidelines as he was growing up and attending the games. His favorite player? “Well growing up it was O.J. Simpson. I was 14 years old when he was at his height of fame.”

Miller says nowadays his favorites include all the “big ones.” But he added, “I really admire the guys with a lot of character. I like the guys like Jack Kemp. They didn’t have all the greatest physical skill in the world but they rose to the challenge and were able to overcome whatever physical limitations they had just by sure force of will,” he explained. “Jack Kemp was a leader of men more than he was a great passer.”

A lot of surprises came for Miller when he was talking to some of the African American players that are in this book about struggles they went through back in the 60s.

“You hear about the civil rights movement, but I was actually talking to some of the guys who were there taking part in the marches. Or they played a role in having the AFL all-star game moved from one city to another because of the racism they were being subjected to. They were part of the civil rights movement; they were part of the changes that were made that blacks are experiencing today.

“You just think of these guys as athletes, but then you realize how human they really are. How it wasn’t just about the job, but they had a role in shaping our country’s history,” explained Miller.

He also said that some of the best interviews were from the guys who were down-to-earth. “I talked to Al Bemiller who was center back in the 1960s. What was cool was he brought me back to his house and he was pouring me beer while we were doing the interview.”

A few of the interviews are with former players who were only with the Bills for a very short time, but the part they played in that time made their input crucial to the book.

“Some of these guys played only one year and those were the ones that were fun to talk to because their memories are so vivid. If you played for 15 years the games start to blend together, but if you play only one year you remember every single game, sometimes every play,” acknowledged Miller.

In writing this book, Miller found that guys who played in the AFL in the 60s had jobs aside from being football players, unlike the players today.

“Some of them only made $15,000, so in the off-season they were teachers or insurance salesmen, some owned construction companies. They did something to make a living. Al Bemiller is pushing 70 and he is still teaching and Wilmer Fowler who played in 1960 is the commissioner for pistol permits in the city of Buffalo. These guys are still working because they have to,” he noted.

Although Miller and Levy worked on this book for six months, they never met face-to-face until a book signing earlier in October. “When we got together it was like we had known each other because we had talked and bounced ideas off each other, so we sat down and got to taking like it was old times,” Miller said about first meeting Levy.

The two men are no strangers to being published. Before this book, Miller had three books under his belt, two of which are also about the Bills. So when he found out the publisher was doing a new series of books on the greatest plays in football history, he wanted to do one on the Bills.

“I contacted them and they wrote back the very next day and said, ‘great, we would love to have you do it, would you mind doing it with Marv Levy?’ I’m not going to turn down an opportunity like that,” said Miller, who lives in Springville with his wife Cathaline and their son Benjamin.

Previous to this book, Miller wrote “Buffalo’s Forgotten Champions” and more recently “Rockin’ the Rockpile” in 2007, which were also about the Bills; and “The Icemen Cameth,” a history of the ice industry at Lime Lake.

Levy, who holds a masters degree from Harvard University is no novice to the written word either. In 2004 he published a memoir of his life as a football coach called, “Where Else Would You Rather Be?” He also just finished writing his first fictional novel, but has yet to have it published.

”Game Changers” is available at Barnes and Noble, Borders or at Amazon.com.