Success is an unfamiliar feeling for Kansas City Chiefs fans

The extreme emotions of this year’s Super Bowl and the success of the Kansas City Chiefs is a new thing for fans to handle.

I guess until now I’ve never actually cared about the Super Bowl.

I’m not nervous. I’m actually relatively confident about the game, considering I’m a fan of the franchise that is the single greatest in NFL history at breaking their fans’ hearts in the playoffs. The game is the game—the same ball, the same rules. Just a lot more pyro and a much longer halftime show. I trust Mahomes, and I firmly believe the Kansas City Chiefs will win.

So it’s not nervousness. It’s more a tangible, physical anxiety. These two weeks between AFC Championship and Super Bowl have been torturously long. It isn’t a childhood, waiting-for-Christmas torture. It’s a bottomless pit in the gut. It’s an irrational fear of the unknown. It’s objectively way too much emotional investment in a dumb football game.

Mostly, though, it’s reflective of just how foreign success is to me as a Chiefs fan (and also in general, but we’re not talking about my failures here). We like to frame the Chiefs making a habit of coming up short as a curse, but it’s simply been 50 years of not being good enough. Now they are good enough, and I don’t quite know how to handle it.

I’ve finally gotten something I’ve wanted so desperately for so long. For nearly 30 years, I’ve fantasized about a Chiefs Super Bowl. It’s something part of me believed I’d only ever see in Madden. But now, it’s real. I have what I’ve desired. It’s shimmering in my hands like the rarest of gems, and my only thought is I don’t know what to do with it. I’m scared I’m going to break it.

The emotional investment in watching your favorite football team is a visceral, intense experience. Nearly every play carries a weight of importance. Like watching a well-made movie thriller, it can be physically exhausting. And that’s just the regular season.

If the Super Bowl proves to be a close game, it’ll be like slowly gliding across a razor blade. It will not be a pleasant experience, but it also will be exactly the experience it should be. If watching your favorite team when the games matter less is emotionally draining, watching them when the game matters the most should be agonizing. It only makes the payoff better.

That’s what makes this Super Bowl different from any potential future Chiefs success. Once the Chiefs win a Super Bowl, any future titles become an expectation, not an achievement. When Pixar wins a Best Animated Feature Oscar everyone shrugs – it’s expected. But 20 years ago, they were basically the reason the category was created. In the ’90s, Pixar was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. Now, they’re the blueprint. Now, they’re boring. Because sustained success is boring. Hopefully the Chiefs someday will be that kind of boring, too.

For now, though, the Chiefs are arguably the most thrilling thing in all of sports. So I at least hope I can enjoy fresh success now, before it continues and makes me fat and content. Before the Chiefs become the blueprint.

I’ve lived in Indiana all my life. I’ve gotten more comments on any Chiefs gear I’ve worn over the last two seasons than the rest of my life combined, probably. The last two weeks in particular have been almost exclusively people who are fans of other teams openly congratulating me, telling me how fun the Chiefs are, or canonizing Mahomes.

It’s a far, far cry from the laughter and “Chiefs suck!” of years past. Yesterday a Raiders fan stopped me in the street just to tell me he was rooting for the Chiefs and that he thought “Your quarterback is the best thing I’ve ever seen.” A Raiders fan! Like, what am I supposed to say to that?

Again, I don’t know how to handle all this. My brain doesn’t have the RAM to process all this new information. Overnight I’ve stepped from the reality I was used to, where the Chiefs were a punchline to one where they are everyone’s second favorite team. The Chiefs are cool. That’s even more astonishing than them finally making a Super Bowl.

So I’m going to try really hard to shed the anxiety and enjoy this next week or so. Because it’s the last time I get to be a part of newborn success with this team. There’s no catharsis next time. There’s no “WE DID IT!”

Next time—and there will be a next time—it’ll just be the next time. And that’ll be just a little bit less fun.