The year the Sabres debuted (1970) was an important year for major league sports in Buffalo. In addition to the Sabres' debut, the Buffalo Bills officially joined the National Football League, and the National Basketball Association's Buffalo Braves also began to play, sharing Memorial Auditorium with the Sabres. The city of Buffalo went from having no teams in the established major professional sports leagues to three in one off-season, a situation that proved to be unsustainable. Between the Braves and the Sabres, the Sabres would prove to be by far the more successful of the two; Paul Snyder, the "nouveau riche" Braves owner, publicly feuded with the old money Knoxes and the local college basketball scene, eventually losing those feuds and being forced to sell his team in 1976. Subsequent owners of the Braves, in a series of convoluted transactions tied to the ABA–NBA merger, moved the team out of Buffalo.