Arrowhead Adventures: Cowboys vs Chiefs

Id been looking forward to this game for quite some time for several reasons. My friend Lori is a big Chiefs fan, and our sense of humors really connect, so I knew win or lose we were going to have fun.  I have a big interest in the history of the game, so the fact that the teams were “going old school” appealed to me as well.

I knew the Cowboys were always a tough team to play, but I had in my mind it would be a close game. Finally,  Jeremy’s recent posts had me believing this was a game we could win.

As we entered KC, a hay truck dropped quite a few bales in our path, but Lori was alert and we avoided what could have been a pretty big wreck. We couldn’t decide if this was a bad omen or a good one. The menu at Arthur Bryant’s soon put the incident behind us.

I’m the self proclaimed decision maker when it comes to whether we eat the best BBQ on the planet , or if we take it with us. A quick check of the temperature, barometric pressure, and cloud density made the decision easy, and we got our food to go.

Traffic was backed up for several miles, so we ate our BBQ in the car as we inched toward One Arrowhead Drive. We slammed the Jeeps doors just in time to see the A-10 flyover, and plopped in our seats just seconds before kickoff. The first things I noticed was the place was packed, and we saw lots and lots of blue.

As the game progressed, I mentioned to Lori that the Chiefs fans were oddly subdued  and  the Cowboys fans were unusually loud for opposing team fans. You literally could not tell from the crowd reaction if the calls were for or against the Chiefs. The intensity of the crowd reaction was the same.  In twenty plus years of Arrowhead Adventures, I’ve never seen that before.

To her it was simple. The Chiefs fans were afraid to get excited. That fact had escaped me, but the second she said it I knew she was right. Loss after loss after loss, especially the recent Raider visit, has made us afraid to hope.

Less than two minutes before the end of the game I’d had enough, and we headed for the parking lot. The last minute touchdown and subsequent overtime recaptured our hopes and we finished off the leftover Arthur Bryant’s and waited for the outcome that deep down inside we both knew would come.

Its a sad time at Arrowhead folks. But despite the heartbreaking loss, the old school jerseys made me remember why we love our Chiefs so much.

The Chiefs belong to KC.

Most of the teams in the NFL had kind of scooted around from place to place. The Rams aren’t a St Louis team. The Colts aren’t an Indianapolis team. Even the Raiders flirted with LA before finally finding their way back to Oakland.

But the Chiefs……well the Chiefs are a part of Kansas City. No matter how bad we get, no matter how long the losing streak lasts, the Chief are ours.

We will always have that Superbowl win. Every single player on the Ring of Fame played in KC. No owner was more loved than our Lamar Hunt, and no team ownership loves its fans more than the Hunt family.

Folks hard times are upon us. Its hard to see positive change in the near future.

But as long as the KC Chiefs belong to KC, I’ll belong to the Chiefs, and I’ll make that trek to the greatest stadium in the world, not just because I want to, but because I can’t imagine the KC Chiefs not being such a big part of my life. A part of my life that i don’t ever want to go away.