Life is funny. Every Sunday, I find myself staring at a television. Most days it’s in my living room. Occasionally, it will be at a bar, or in a hotel, or on my phone. But there I am, week after week, watching the Red and Gold.
In my younger years, many of those games had me in attendance. As part of the Chiefs Wolfpack – their youth club – we’d watch games from Arrowhead from seats in the endzone. Seats were pretty easy to come by back in those days. We really could’ve sat anywhere to watch Bill Kenney and the hapless Chiefs. I never saw the haydays. Sure, I saw Derrick and Joe and Marcus. But Derrick died well before his time, Joe and Marcus were on the backside of their careers, and every year something just didn’t seem to click.
When we had the Schottenheimer defenses, the offense was terrible. When we had the Vermiel offenses, our defense was terrible. When our teams were stacked and Super Bowl favorites, they’d inevitably suffer some indignity in the playoffs. The Dave Szott offsides game. The Indianapolis game. The Lin Elliot Game. The 2019 AFC Championship Game where the game was decided by 4 inches and a coin flip.
In my teens, I had a job checking tickets at Arrowhead. That might’ve been the low point. We barely checked any tickets and would switch off to see those awful Chiefs give up leads to the Raiders, the Chargers, and the mother-bleeping Denver Broncos. The hatred for Oakland, and Elway ran deep.
The list could go on. We rattle them off like cards on a never ending rolodex. Kansas City Chiefs fans are like C3PO. We’re made to suffer.
The trophy that bears the name of the owner and founder of the Super Bowl itself had never been won by his team. It was always one thing or another or never in grasp.
That ends this year. That ended Sunday.
The reasons go far beyond Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes, certainly, but for ease of narrative, it certainly bears the brunt of the weight. The 27 yard touchdown scramble by Mahomes would’ve been a fumble or a holding call in years past. The fake punt the week before would’ve been a scramble for a first down by the Texans. The dice finally rolled box cars and the stars finally aligned.
Your Chiefs are Miami bound. Now that the dam has burst, the team might as well bring home the bigger trophy. Maybe it will come down to some silly play. Some silly penalty. Some goofy missed field goal. But this year is different. I don’t know why. But it’s different.
Life is funny.
(Get different with Chris Kamler on Twitter, where he is known as @TheFakeNed. Search for him on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube and watch him on Landmark Live on Facebook at Platte County Landmark)