I can’t help but point out that we are living in some alternate reality in terms of football fandom. I’m 56 years old and I cut my professional football fandom on the Kansas City Chiefs of the 1990s. It was a glorious and agonizing fandom. A friend and I bought some season tickets in 1989. Upper deck. Something like $300 for the year. I’m sure I wrote a post-dated check to secure the seats. My buddy and his wife drove from Wichita to the games each week.
I drug my young family to Dallas and Detroit to see them play road games. We planned our days and weeks around them. My mother would often say, “why do you let that game change how your week is?” when I would mope around after a Chiefs loss.
The Chiefs won often during those years, but it was never pretty. It was smash mouth, take no prisoners football. Defense, special teams and a little bit of offense to make it grind. We had heartbreak after heartbreak and over the next decade, our personal fandom softened to viewing each Sunday as more of a game than a calling. We ended our regular attendance shortly after the Dick Vermeil era that ended in 2005, the football on the field had changed and so had we.
Then along came Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes and I’m a bit jealous of the twenty-something fans and those that rode the waves over the decades that have been on this ride. It’s a prettier version of football and much more glorious in terms of wins, losses and Super Bowls. If you’re in the midst of a full-on Chiefs fandom, I salute you, but warn you that this is not normal. It is fleeting and change will happen in an instant. An injury, a retirement, a free agent signing, an arrest or something will change the trajectory of this and it will all return to normal, but until then I would savor every single moment of your fandom.
As they say, “these are the salad days.”
Post-dated checks are an underrated financial tool of a prior era. I miss them.
I will remind you that the Boss Man Foley predicted Philadelphia Eagles success last summer on Landmark Live. Foley told the viewers that they may be the team to beat, and he nailed it. He probably made a Kansas casino generated fortune on that take and has buried it in The Landmark vault.
We all know I lean right and I generally like Josh Hawley politics, but he is so cringe personally that it sometimes hurts me. Josh looks like he hits the gym a lot, but also looks like the guy that couldn’t dribble a basketball or throw a baseball. He went to middle school in Lexington, and I doubt he was dominating the roundball games against Richmond or Higginsville.
Anyway, his latest cringe was tweeting at Sen. JD Vance of Ohio went like this.
“So@JDVance1 – my @Chiefs are playing your @Bengals today, on our way to the Super Bowl. Friendly Wager? I’ll bet you some Joe’s KC brisket that the Chiefs win.”
Lol. That just sounds like the seventh grade class treasurer stomping out to the playground to lay down the law on the kickball champion at recess; only to get shoved and told to get back to the student newspaper office. It’s also awkward that the senator from Missouri is betting with product from a Kansas business. I’m no politician betting savant, but don’t they typically bet product from the area they serve? Has Josh ever been to 17th and Brooklyn to discover Arthur Bryant’s? Don’t answer that question.
Maybe leave the footballing and BBQ takes alone is my advice for Josh, that and don’t raise your fist up in solidarity with people preparing to storm any Capitol Buildings. That’s my free political/life advice.
(Guy Speckman can be reached at gspeckman@me.com or playing kickball with Josh Hawley)