Kansas City’s charm, years of misfortune make Chiefs a feel-good Super Bowl story

This was a random Tuesday afternoon in early January 1998, and the person on the opposite facet of the lunch desk was smiling impishly. Throughout us, eyes have been lasered at our desk. It was unsettling on my facet of it. On the opposite?

“Individuals have checked out me this fashion for 35 years on this metropolis,” Len Dawson stated cheerfully.

I requested, “Isn’t that a bit of …”

“Bizarre?” Dawson stated, laughing. “At first. However the factor about this metropolis is, they simply need you to know they keep in mind you. What they need greater than something is to say thanks. You realize, I’ve had dinner with Joe Namath in New York and Bob Griese in Miami and that’s a complete totally different factor. Individuals don’t simply stare, they strategy. In waves. Till you both have to depart or ask the proprietor for a non-public room.”

He waved his arms across the Houston’s within the coronary heart of the Nation Membership Plaza district.

“This,” he stated, “is Kansas Metropolis.”

It had been 28 years since Dawson had led the Chiefs to their first Tremendous Bowl win, 23-7 over the Vikings in Tremendous Bowl IV. It might be 22 extra years earlier than the Chiefs would add a second. Dawson had been round all of it, first as a participant, later as an area TV newscaster and community commentator and at last because the native analyst on radio.

The Chiefs have been dreadful in numerous these years, and once they weren’t they have been one thing even worse: a tease, a big-game disappointment, as soon as shedding three straight house video games as a No. 1 seed within the playoffs.

“That’s the factor with the followers round right here,” Dawson stated that day, which was two days after the Chiefs had stumbled as a 1 seed, shedding 14-10 to the Broncos at Arrowhead Stadium, sending the whole metropolis into everlasting midnight for a couple of mournful weeks. “They present their loyalties even fiercer when occasions are dangerous than once they’re good.”

It’s why I can vouch for the next: In case you don’t have a canine within the hunt every week from Sunday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz.; if you’re a fan of neither the Chiefs nor the Eagles; if you’re not a gambler; if the happiness of your day received’t be dictated by field swimming pools … you possibly can be ok with rooting for the Chiefs.

As a result of the Chiefs are the product of a metropolis that has withstood years — generally many years — of slapstick with its two main tenants, the Chiefs and Royals, and but nonetheless put on the gear, nonetheless fret over the little issues, even in summers when the Royals flirt with 100 losses (as they did this summer time) and autumns when the Chiefs go 2-14 (which that occurred as lately as 2012).

A couple of months after lunch with Dawson I spent the morning of the Royals’ house opener trailing George Brett from his house to an look downtown to the primary occasion at Kauffman Stadium, a 1:05 begin in opposition to the Orioles. And it was the identical factor: each eye, in each café, in each parking zone, in each section of the stadium, was mounted on him.

It was just like the President strolling across the individuals, solely there weren’t Secret Service males maintaining the individuals at bay, simply their very own strict codes of Midwestern decorum. Every time he shook a hand the fan froze, as if in a thrall; however the ones who didn’t get handshakes didn’t spew envy. They have been — sincere — simply completely satisfied to be there.

“I’m a California child, OK?” Brett informed me later, as he sipped a pregame beer. “I really like the solar. And but I dwell, year-round, on this metropolis the place it will get to be about 90 beneath in January. Perhaps now you see why I do that.”

Look, each metropolis has pleasure in its groups. Most, in actual fact, aren’t as fickle as New York or Boston or Philly, locations the place killing the native 9 (or 5, or 11) isn’t only a lifestyle, however a rule of order. St. Louis has some KC in it. Pittsburgh, too. Cleveland? They do love their groups in Cleveland.

However I lived in Kansas Metropolis for a 12 months. It was totally different there. Purer. Regardless of the best way it’s appeared the final 5 years, it hasn’t all the time been straightforward to be a Chiefs fan. That January in 1998 I noticed real despair in scores of saloons and VFW halls and highschool basketball gyms. It’s why I felt so good when the Chiefs received Tremendous Bowl LIV on Feb. 2, 2020.

Typically as a sports activities fan you surprise if there’ll ever be a payoff for all of the devotion. There was that day. There was, in Kansas Metropolis, on day-after-day since Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid began dueting. Good for that metropolis. Good for its followers. And good for you, when you select to undertake them the subsequent 11 days. You’ll be able to be ok with that decide. I promise.