Aug 7, 2014; Kansas City, MO, USA; Kansas City Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt on the field before the game against the Cincinnati Bengals at Arrowhead Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports
Our owner is a football and sports team owner. Clark Hunt is the son of the George Washington of the American Football League and a pillar of the NFL, Lamar Hunt. As his father grew old he took control of the team, and he has owned other Kansas City sports teams as well. All of his fortune seems to be tied up in the sports world. Compare that to Kroenke, who is rich off of real estate, who owns the land he is about to improve a thousand percent by moving an NFL team to it. Why wouldn’t he take the team somewhere where he can make even more billions off of it? If there were a way that Hunt could make a billion dollars by moving the team he might consider it.
Lots of teams that move claim that their city forced them to because they aren’t being provided with an attractive enough or big enough or modern enough stadium. This was the reason that the Rams had to leave Los Angeles, why the Browns had to leave Cleveland, why the Colts had to leave Baltimore, why the Oilers had to leave Houston. Cities are routinely blackmailed by their teams into bankrolling new addresses for their billionaire owned football franchises. Sometimes city or state governments act like they would like nothing more than to get the always-needy NFL team out of their neighborhoods.
Recently the Chiefs and Royals got the Kansas City area to improve both the baseball and football stadiums with $575 million. The Royals kicked in $25 million and the Chiefs kicked in $75 million. Fans got a 25-year lease agreement from the Chiefs. Since then, the city of Kansas City has almost violated the terms of that lease by not paying agreed upon maintenance and upkeep expenses during the economic downturn. Letting the team or teams go in this way would be political suicide in Kansas City. Our political leaders are motivated to make their agreements last with our teams.
Our stadium is special in so many ways that it is actually a factor in our team staying. It is different from the majority of NFL stadiums in use today. First, it is old. It was first used in 1972. At 43 years old it is the third oldest stadium in use. Only Green Bay’s Lambeau Field is older and also has it’s original name. San Diego has changed their stadium name twice and it currently bears the name of a corporation, like most of the stadiums do these days.
If you look at the Packers’ website you will notice that the stadium is prominently featured, having it’s own top menu item. The Packers are proud of their old house. The San Diego site has no prominent mention of its home. Arrowhead is a prominent feature of both the Chiefs’ website and the team. Arrowhead is a member of the Kansas City team.
Our stadium may be old, but it houses 78,000 maniacs for eight games per year. Our house is the loudest in the nation, even though it’s an open air stadium. For 43 years, people have been talking about Arrowhead – nobody in Kansas City would have any trouble telling you how to get there, or what it’s like inside on game day. Our fans are well trained to the needs of the team. They know to be quiet when our offense is at work, they know that if they are loud enough for the enemy offense that they can cause penalties and confusion.
When the offense jumps or there is a delay of game or time out due to noise-related confusion, the already deafening noise gets even louder as the fans all holler at one another in congratulation. Our Stadium and fans truly are the 12th man.
How can a team ever hope to have what we have in Kansas City after a move? The Los Angeles Rams will have all brand new fans. They won’t know when to yell and they won’t know how to truly love their team. For the first 20 years they will be like borrowing a friend’s car – it will be familiar but you can’t fall in love with it. They won’t know for 20 years whether the Rams will plan to stay. Los Angeles can never own the Rams like we own the Chiefs – our management has let us keep the stadium named Arrowhead and gave us a twenty five year promise to love us back.
Touchdown, KANSAS CITY.