When buying a Kansas City Chiefs jersey goes wrong

Four months ago, I made a fateful decision. With the Kansas City Chiefs set to make their second-consecutive Super Bowl appearance, I made a choice that is still haunting me to this day: I bought a Super Bowl LV jersey.

What seemed like a great idea at the time not only backfired but turned into a worldwide hunt to track down a package of disappointment.

It was early February and I was excited. The Chiefs were back in the Super Bowl and I’d finally decided to buy a jersey to mark the occasion.

I opted to go for the home red jersey with Travis Kelce’s name and number stitched on the back and the Super Bowl LV patch on the front. “An excellent choice,” I thought to myself. It wouldn’t arrive in time for the big game, but I was happy with my latest purchase.

Buying a Kansas City Chiefs jersey went from pleasure to pain for this fan.

Initially, it took me a while to decide to go ahead and buy the jersey. I was skeptical, and there were a number of factors that led to my hesitancy.

I knew there was an element of risk involved. Do I buy the jersey before the game while they were in stock, knowing the Chiefs might lose? Do I wait until after the game only to run the risk of the jerseys being sold out?

To make things slightly more difficult, I live in Melbourne, Australia, so a post-game trip to Rally House, Dick’s Sporting Goods or the Chiefs pro shop wasn’t exactly in the cards. If I waited until after the game, I would have to try my luck in the hit-or-miss world of online shopping.

To further complicate decision, I get pretty superstitious when it comes to sports. What if buying a jersey before the game put some sort of jinx on the Chiefs? What if the sporting gods perceive my actions as some sort of arrogance and take action as a result?

It was a tough call to make but fortune favors the bold, I thought to myself, and so after a couple days of thinking, I called up the Chiefs pro shop and placed my order.

It was a decision that backfired spectacularly.

The Chiefs got absolutely hammered and lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers by a final score of 31-9. As a result, my new jersey would now serve as a perpetual reminder of that disappointing Sunday and possibly the worst Chiefs game I have ever seen. Fantastic.

On the back of an awful result, I was just so happy to know that I’d spent a not-so-insignificant amount of money on a reminder of the big game we lost (ah, not really).

The week after the game, I tried to salvage the situation. I called the pro shop to see if they could do me a favor: was it possible to still get the same jersey but just not with the Super Bowl LV patch on it? No, they said, it was too late. The patch would be attached. Oh, joy.

But now, over a dozen weeks after making that fateful order, the decision is still coming back to bite me. Not only had I bought a jersey that I now don’t particularly want, but I still don’t actually have that jersey—it is currently lost somewhere in the postal service universe.

Its exact location is unknown, which means I now have to try and track down and find an item that will only serve to remind me of a game I have been trying my best to forget. Great.

What’s worse than spending $150 on a product that you no longer really want? Spending $150 on a product that you no longer really want and not actually receiving it.

When I ordered the jersey, the pro shop said it could take 4-10 weeks before it is sent out, but as that time frame elapsed, the package has remained undelivered.

So far, my efforts to track down the jersey have proved fruitless. With the jersey being sent from Kansas City to Australia, there really is a chance that it could be almost anywhere in the world right now.

A bold purchase that seemed like such a good idea in the moment has come back to haunt me time and time again. If a Super Bowl loss didn’t hurt enough, a global hunt to track down a pricey, unfortunate memento of that miserable Sunday night just really caps it off.

And so, my hunt continues. More than 120 days after Super Bowl LV, I am still waiting for my jersey to arrive. But when it finally does, I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to bring myself to wear it.