Clark Hunt spoke for the first time since the team announced they will be forfeiting a home game in order to host a game in London before the Chiefs game against the Buffalo Bills. As expected, Hunt had a positive spin on the decision, but understands why fans would be upset.
(Quotes from Terez A. Paylor of the Kansas City Star.)
"“Let me just say directly — I understand why our fans are frustrated,” Hunt said. “Frankly, I don’t expect them to be happy about it … they’re so passionate, and they want to spend their Sunday afternoons cheering the team on.“We’re going to talk about ideas about things that we can do for them to help compensate.”“For the ones that can’t do that, we definitely want to do something for them, in Kansas City. Perhaps Arrowhead. We’re working on that. We’ll roll that out in the near future.”"
Hunt told the press it was the NFL that asked the Chiefs to host a game in London and the team accepted the request. This somewhat kills the notion the Chiefs chose to host a game in London on their own, but says something that the Chiefs didn’t deny the NFL’s request.
"“The league requested that we play the game over there. … The series has been around for seven or so years. We’ll be the 10th team to give up a home game. The league is in the process of encouraging more teams to do so. I would expect, over time, that the list will grow to a majority of the teams.”"
Remember, Hunt is the chairman of the international committee for the NFL, so that plays into it on some level. But it also means he speaks from a place of knowledge when he says more bigger-market teams are going to be giving up home games. Enough teams, in fact, that he thinks the majority of teams will have given up a home game soon.
"“I’d be reluctant to go market by market, but I’ll tell you, there will be some of those teams playing games, particularly if they want to bid for a Super Bowl. I felt like it was not a question of if we were going to end up playing a home game overseas, it was really a question of when.”"
The Super Bowl was also brought up as a reason (again) for why the Chiefs gave up the home date. Hunt stressed the question about Kansas City winning a Super Bowl bid or not has more to do with weather than anything else. The NFL has played one Super Bowl in a ‘cold weather’ city, last year’s Super Bowl in New York. But New York is one of the biggest markets in the world and does not play in the same ballpark as Kansas City. It is difficult to think weather is the only thing holding the NFL back from awarding a Super Bowl to Kansas City.
So there’s your London update from Hunt. What say you?