Randy's Report: Ailing Arrowhead

Whenever I get to Arrowhead I can always sense its mood. To me Arrowhead isn’t just a stadium it’s a living breathing thing. When it’s cold outside it’s quiet. When the sun is shining and it’s warm it’s loud and exciting and it comes alive.

I’ve always felt that there were two kinds of KC football fans. Chiefs fans and Arrowhead fans. Arrowhead fans are also Chiefs fans but many Chiefs fans have never set foot in the stadium. They are missing a lot.

How many football fans can name each NFL team and its stadium? Some can, some can’t. Everybody knows about Arrowhead.

Arrowhead is tough. Arrowhead is loud. Arrowhead has the best tailgating. Its never an easy win at Arrowhead.

Arrowhead’s mood Sunday when we pulled in was like the weather — cold and quiet. Lots of tailgating, not much music, good smells from the grills. Lots of fun still to be had at Arrowhead but it doesn’t have that much to do with football anymore.

Most of the people that show up this late in the year of a horrible season are what we call “transients”. The beneficiaries of season ticket holders who have had enough, or folks that can’t pass up the ten dollar tickets that were selling for a hundred or more at the beginning of last year. Some can talk football, quite a few can’t. I must say that they do seemed very excited to be there.

My buddy Rick and I finally got parked after we were directed around the stadium to where we sit. That hasn’t happened in awhile because of the construction so we were excited. The walk around the stadium with the construction is miserable and the 40 degree weather would have only made it worse.

As we sat and collected our thoughts a red POS Cavalier with four guys in it came screeching up next to us. I heard a yell and the door came crashing open into our van., One of the guys jumped out and promptly threw up by my door then they all jumped out and disappeared.

This one was of those situations that you can ignore if it happens in somebody else’s backyard but if it happens in yours you have to deal with it. This was definitely in our back yard.

The guy came back after about a minute and looked in my window and apologized profusely and slurringly said he had thrown up because he thought he had a fly in his beer.

“When bad things happen, it usually involves alcohol” my buddy Rick said and we laughed about that and looked at the damage which turned out to be a two inch door ding that wasn’t something you wanted in your car. We all talked about it and got a laugh and Rick felt like it would make a good souvenir for the day so we all shook hands and left. That’s just the kind of thing that happens at Arrowhead, things that probably wouldn’t happen anywhere else.

It reminded me of an incident last year at the Green Bay game. My friend and I got there 20 minutes late. We saw an Escalade get hit in the door by a smaller Chevrolet. They two drivers yelled at each other, but jumped back in their cars and left without exchanging info at all. They had to get to the game. It seems something like that always happens every time I go to a game, and it’s something I really cant explain, it just has to be experienced.

It’s kind of a standard joke in my section that I watch the cheerleaders as much through my binoculars as the game and it’s probably true but what are you going to do. I was getting a good viewing at halftime when I realized that one of the cheerleaders on the field has sat next to me a couple of games ago. I had mentioned that in an earlier posting it was cool to figure what that was about. The many of the cheerleaders took of their jackets revealing the standard uniform. That was a nice turn of events.

Halftime is when I usually poll the people in my section and I did that to some extent, though nobody really looked like they wanted to talk ball.

The guys behind me were very excited about Larry Johnson‘s performance but none of us knew what his future was or what it should be and we all just kind of shook our heads.

The second half was so hard to take and watch. I know in my heart that a wind would just move us down a draft pick but its still not something any of us can accept. I realized that the sad fact is that the games are now just individual battles and not part of a bigger war. That’s something I’ve never had to deal with in Arrowhead before. At least we got to see how Quinn Gray can handle himself, we all thought he looked good.

Rick told me that he had seen about a hundred games in Arrowhead but admitted he had never seen her so low and I had to agree.

The radio informed us that this was the highest score ever put up against us in Arrowhead and that didn’t help things a bit. How much longer can Herm Edwards get away with this crap I thought? Neither of us could imagine the answer to that it has just stopped making sense.

The mood never lasts though and it didn’t today as Rick and I talked about our experiences with Raiders fans as he had been stuck in the middle of a section filled with black and silver — I’ll share some of those stories with you soon.

Rick and I decided that the Raider game would be the one he would see with me next year and we punched fists and considered it a commitment.

Next home game is the Chargers and I’m really excited about that one. My friend Lance who lives in Chicago is flying in for that one and we are going to make it a weekend. It’s the only time I see him anymore. Arrowhead has a way of bringing old friends and new friends together.