By Paul Rhodes, publisher and editor
What a great time to be a Kansas City Chiefs fan.
Five straight AFC Championship games. And now, a third trip to the Super Bowl in just four years. It’s almost getting hard to keep track of just how good our Chiefs are.
But between Kim and I, we’re getting pretty good at keeping the running record straight.
I can’t say that I’ve been a Kansas City Chiefs fan all of my life, although I could have been if I had just worked a little harder at it. I was 13 years old when the Chiefs won their first Super Bowl, and my dad enjoyed keeping an eye on pro football when I was a kid. Still, I don’t remember our household going crazy – or even getting too excited – when the Chiefs took their first NFL title.
If we had known it was going to take a half a century for that to happen again, maybe we would have invested a little more of ourselves.
Time warp forward to today, and I would say my girlfriend Kim and I are pretty invested. As the Chiefs started building momentum five years ago, we started getting involved as fans.
Kim would quickly tell you she’s a Chiefs fan, not a football fan. I played along with that assessment for the past few years, but this year proved something of a turning point for my sweetheart. With the Chiefs working their way toward becoming a football dynasty, Kim found herself becoming more invested in the knowledge that makes you a football fan, and not just someone who can tell you what channel the Chiefs are on this Sunday afternoon. That became especially obvious as the regular season wound down, and tracking the progression of her Chiefs suddenly required a working knowledge of team records and standings, and the football mathematics that would carry them to another Super Bowl.
And now, here we are.
I’m excited to announce that for the second time in just four years, Kim and I will be watching the Super Bowl from the deck of a cruise ship in the Eastern Caribbean. In 2020, we watched our Chiefs win just their second Super Bowl in 50 years as Kansas City defeated the San Francisco 49ers. Oh my, that was fun.
And this year, as luck would have it, we’re going to recreate that same opportunity.
I don’t know how much of her KC gear Kim is going to pack, but I expect it will be a lot. Of course she’ll pack her Patrick Mahomes jersey. And her Chiefs socks. And maybe her hat and gloves, just in case it’s chilly out on deck that night.
After the Chiefs sealed their berth in the Super Bowl Sunday night, I realized that it was probably time for me to invest in something new myself, in terms of Chiefs gear. All I have is a well-worn AFC championship T-shirt from 2019, and yes…I’ll have to pack it along for good luck. It’s been my game-day shirt for five years, and you don’t mess with tradition.
But just for fun, I went out early this week and bought myself a Travis Kelce jersey. It’ll be fun for Kim and I to be the “dynamic duo” on the cruise ship. I’m not sure how it’ll look with my tuxedo on formal nights if the Chiefs win it all, but I may just have to put up with some good-natured ribbing.
You only live once, and it really is getting more and more special to be a Chiefs fan.
