Bills stadium excuses give Chiefs an invaluable Arrowhead 2.0 lesson

While Buffalo Bills fans may be ecstatic that their franchise (and its home field) are in the news for something other than yet another crippling early playoff exit, they can't be that excited about what's circulating over the course of the past week. Any time a new stadium is under construction, there should certainly be buzz among a fanbase. Particularly Buffalo, where there's really not much else to write home about other than Niagara Falls and 8-ish Bills home games per year. Before the naysayers start saying "nay," I fully understand that Kansas City is not Milan or Tokyo. Relax.

The Bills unveiled their new $2.2 billion masterpiece recently for fans with their "Blue and Red" practice, and many took note of some, well, interesting views at the new Highmark.

I can't imagine the thrill of getting your "PSL" (personal seat license, apparently) if you're a Bills fan just to find the agony of being behind a gigantic piece of mildly opaque plexiglass or squarely behind a space-age stairwell that blocks roughly 20 yards of the entire field from your line of sight. To be fair, some of the members of Bills Mafia who jump through tables and try to steal tailgate valor from those of us who invented the game may be overserved to the point of no return by the time they enter the stadium, leaving them carefree as it pertains to having 20 percent of the field deleted. Most, though, would certainly see a problem with this.

The problem I see? The architecture firm that designed the Bills stadium, Populous, is based in Kansas City. The location is not the issue. The problem lies in the lineage of Populous and what it could mean for a specific, recently rendered new construction project that will be coming to a large patch of Kansas land near you soon.

While MANICA Architecture won the battle with Populous for the design right to Arrowhead 2.0, the two companies are tied together through history. MANICA founder Dave Manica spent 13 years with HOK Sports, which would eventually become Populous, before starting MANICA in 2007. It would be a pretty large assumption on my part to presume that MANICA and Populous have the same philosophy or design styles, particularly as someone who couldn't necessarily get an A in 6th grade geometry despite my teacher Mrs. Allen's exceptional educational prowess.

Populous responded to the social media outcry last week by essentially saying that this design was intentional. Jonathan Mallie, the managing director of Populous' Americas practice, had this to say:

"Starting with just the building type, stadiums in general or airports, these are some of the most complex buildings in the world that we have to deal with. When you think about that, all of design are trade-offs. And so one major thing that we wanted to do was alleviate as much congestion on the concourses as possible. Create open views from concourse. Old Highmark didn't have this.

"So, old Highmark you're going behind a wall and you're going to get your food, to get your drink. So we wanted to keep those stairwells out of that concourse and put them on that leading edge. And this is not unique to Buffalo. So there are 21 professional stadiums between the NFL and Major League Baseball – 14 of which in the NFL – that have the outboard stairs. It's common practice. It's a way to create those views from the concourse, alleviate the congestion. And so when you go and get your drink, you can actually catch a view of the game."

Right, yeah, that makes sense. The first thing I would consider when building an NFL stadium would be to make sure that the people who are standing in the concourses, getting another $20 beer and nachos served in a plastic football helmet, can see the game. Who cares if you can see it from your actual seats?

But what Populous lacked in providing the Bills with field visibility, they made up for in spades with free PR and crisis management. Mallie's comments were echoed last week by The Buffalo News.

It's always good when you can lean on others to create excuses for something you thought was going to be incredible but was quickly panned. The spin coming from Buffalo and Populous about the stadium is quite something. "We meant to build it this way. Isn't it cool that you can see the whole field in a 360 view from the concourse?" Sure, and I meant to go bald because I wanted those around me to get a full 360 view of my scalp as opposed to having a full head of luscious strawberry-blond hair.

It feels almost like the city of Buffalo itself is going through some sort of mid-Josh Allen's-career crisis. You have a generational talent at QB but can't seem to get the job done. Let's throw a new stadium at the people to keep them happy. The issue is that the stadium has thus far fallen flat, which would be like a 45-year-old divorcee's new Audi convertible breaking down right after he picks up his 20-year-old girlfriend for a night out on the town.

Let's just hope that this type of obtuse outlook on stadium design doesn't run in the family. MANICA has a phenomenal chance to separate itself from Populous even further by knocking Arrowhead 2.0 out of the park from a design standpoint. However, if they do repeat the mistakes of their elder sibling, I can't imagine the outrage if the Chiefs' already somewhat controversial move to cross state lines and vacate a pre-existing football Mecca ends up with obstructed views. Fans will be irate from the jump. I can see the takes now. But if you simply Google "New Highmark Stadium," you can leave a review. I would encourage Chiefs fans to do so over the course of the next five years so MANICA can gather consumer feedback and not make the same mistake as Populous.

Editor's note: A previous version of this article stated that Populous, the firm behind Buffalo's new Highmark Stadium, is designing the Chiefs' new stadium. That is incorrect. Kansas City-based MANICA is the lead design architect, with HNTB as architect of record. The article has been updated. Arrowhead Addict regrets the error.

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