I try to be a positive person, which is difficult, because everything is terrible.
“You don’t have to hate these guys,” I said to myself during the AFC championship game, as I joined a miserable nation in watching the Chiefs book their 473rd consecutive trip to the Super Bowl. “Sure, they’re objectively the worst. No one’s denying that! But don’t you always say you like watching great teams play at the highest level? Aren’t you always droning on and on about wanting to bear witness to the amazing things human beings are capable of? Shouldn’t you be thanking the Chiefs for embodying the ideal of a perfect football team, in much the same way that the Robbie Williams monkey movie embodies the ideal of a perfect Robbie Williams monkey movie?”
This was wise advice, the advice of a mature and beautiful soul (mine). Sports ought to be a celebration of the best in all of us. I contemplated this truth. At last, I nodded.
“No,” I said. “No!”
I hate the Kansas City Chiefs. It’s not my fault. I have tried—sincerely tried!—not to hate them, but I have failed. I hated them before this year’s Super Bowl. I hated them during this year’s Super Bowl (but with nachos). And now that Super Bowl LIX, like the mouthful of hot saliva its hideous Roman numerals evoke, has been swallowed by the history books, my dark heart perseveres.
On Sunday night, the Chiefs were gloriously defeated by the Philadelphia Eagles, a team that I have also always kinda disliked but am now, after its 40-22 beatdown of Kansas City, prepared to accept as the greatest force for good the world has ever seen. And sure, I could spend the rest of this piece celebrating Jalen Hurts, who had just five incompletions all night, or the Eagles defense, which pressured Patrick Mahomes on [checks the official stats compiled by the Elias Sports Bureau] 6,000 percent of his dropbacks. But honestly? The real joy of last night was watching the Chiefs emerge as the second-biggest losers of the night (after Drake, who was already well into the process of taking the biggest L in human history when Kendrick brought Serena out).
Let’s leave the good vibes to my esteemed colleagues on The Ringer’s NFL team. Instead, let’s savor the noble pursuit of kicking the losers while they’re down. Here are the most rigorously logical, culturally insightful, and deeply considered reasons I, a person who tries not to hate sports teams, hate the Kansas City Chiefs.
1. I just do.
It's nothing to do with Kansas City, the place. I love Kansas City. Fun town. Rich history. Anyone who says it’s not a good barbecue spot needs to unfollow the Texas Ministry of Propaganda on all platforms, immediately.
Beyond that, though? Well, let’s talk about Tommy Tuberville.
Look, it’s obviously not Patrick Mahomes’s fault that Tommy Tuberville, the ghoulish Alabama senator and former college football coach, keeps lying about having recruited Mahomes at Texas Tech. It is 100 percent not Mahomes’s fault that Donald Trump is now publicly praising Tuberville for doing such a great job coaching Mahomes, even though Tuberville was already gone before Mahomes ever got to Lubbock. It’s definitely not Mahomes’s fault that Tuberville is accepting this praise as though he actually deserves it, because Tuberville is a moral vampire who would take credit for blowing up the Death Star if he thought he could get away with it (and if he didn’t love the Death Star). I can’t blame Mahomes for any of this.
At the same time … I kind of blame Mahomes for this? Not for anything he did, or anything that’s actually his, you know, responsibility or whatever. But every sports team leaves a sort of spiritual residue on the parts of the culture it touches, and Tuberville’s brazen attempt to take credit for the career of a three-time Super Bowl MVP whom he has possibly never met is like the wet fingerprint of the Chiefs organization. It just fits them. The Chiefs aren't exactly a team of grifters and clout chasers, but the aura they project is the aspirational ideal of grifters and clout chasers everywhere: Jake Paul explicitly cited Mahomes as his inspiration ahead of his Mike Tyson fight last year. Every time the camera cuts to Taylor Swift hobnobbing with Brittany Mahomes in a luxury box, every time the Kelce family (yes, even Jason) releases a podcast, you feel a thousand YouTubers reaching out toward their North Star. You hear the rattle of vitamin supplements that contain no actual vitamins raining down on a field of e-books explaining how you, too, can get rich dropshipping vegan leather phone cases through Amazon. Of course a MAGA hack like Tuberville wants to horn in on the action.
What’s that? You think that’s one of the stupidest paragraphs I’ve ever written? You’re one of the stupidest paragraphs I’ve ever written.
2. I just do! Shut up.
“Bundlerooski,” I thought as I watched Mahomes hit Xavier Worthy on a 24-yard throw late in the third quarter, Kansas City’s first big play of the game. “Bundlerooski.”
People keep floating various ideas for why so many Americans have turned against the Chiefs. Some say Americans prefer underdogs. Some say Americans love variety. Recently, USA Today interviewed an academic who studies schadenfreude, the malicious joy we take in the suffering of those we dislike. His scholarly take was that Americans are tired of watching a single team dominate for so long. “Perhaps one could argue,” he said, “that the fatigue of seeing the same team win repeatedly could induce disliking to some degree.”
Now, obviously I respect anyone who spends his life studying our delight in other people’s failures—that goes without saying. But, respectfully, fatigue-induced dislike is not the reason people have turned on the Chiefs. People have turned on the Chiefs because they’re the worst.
Every time I hear Andy Reid say “bundlerooski” I want to boycott every product the Chiefs advertise. Only I can’t, because they advertise everything, and I would be rendered incapable of participating in the economy and forced to live in a cave, which would at least have the pleasant side effect of keeping me from having to hear so much about the Chiefs.
3. They have not apologized to me for what they have done.
Wouldn't have to be in person. I’m not a vindictive man. A phone call would suffice. “Hey, Brian, the whole team is here—all 53 of us—and we just wanted to say, one by one, that we’re sorry to have irked you by our very existence. You were right, we were wrong. We sincerely apologize for attempting to fulfill the competitive mission of our organization by vying for another Super Bowl trophy.”
I would forgive them! (I wouldn’t forgive them.) I would appreciate the gesture!
You’ve probably heard the complaint that the Chiefs get all the calls. The reason you’ve probably heard this complaint is that everyone makes it, and the reason everyone makes it is because it’s obviously true. You know it. I know it. The beekeepers working in top-secret rural apiaries as part of a referee-led conspiracy of a size and dark extent not seen since the middle seasons of The X-Files know it. And Josh Allen definitely knows it.
Nevertheless, during the run-up to the Super Bowl, several analysts, including The Ringer’s own Rodger Sherman, ran the data and found that, in fact, the Chiefs don’t get all the calls. The numbers just don’t add up … they claim. The science doesn’t support it.
Hm. Looks like this conspiracy goes deeper than I thought.
4. They’re kind of boring?
In my opinion, a truly dominant team ought to blow the lid right off the game. You want them to look like they're cruising past the limits of what’s possible in their sport. On Sunday, the Chiefs didn’t even look competitive, let alone achieve transcendent levels of greatness. Let’s put this in tush push terms, in honor of the Eagles. If a team is going to attack a short-yardage situation by deploying two grown men to shove their own quarterback in the ass, do we want to see two little guys do the shoving? Do we want to see Jalen Hurts lightly bonked on the ass? I submit to you that we do not. We want to see two hulking giants absolutely piledrive the quarterback’s ass so that a sonic boom rolls through the stadium and Hurts goes flying like a Dodge Daytona launched over Niagara Falls. We want Maximum Ass Impact at all times. This is what David Foster Wallace meant when he wrote that sports “are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty.”
Now extend this metaphor to other, less ass-centric components of the game. The Patriots were annoying at their peak, but you also got to watch Randy Moss run so fast that a little zipper of fire followed him down the turf. The Cowboys were annoying in the ’90s, but watching Deion Sanders single-handedly shut down an entire half of the field was cool as hell.
The Chiefs? I don’t know. This season, to me—and keep in mind that I try not to watch them if I can avoid it—they’ve been more like the Steve Young–era 49ers. A lot of technocratic competence, not a lot of Jesus God Did I Really Just See That. There are basically only two scenarios with the Chiefs when you feel like all the rules fly out the window and that anything could happen. They are:
- Steve Spagnuolo is signaling via every means possible that he is not about to call a blitz. Genuinely terrifying moment. The exception to everything I’ve written in this column.
- Harrison Butker is about to speak into a microphone.
Otherwise, it’s just a lot of, like … ooh, did you sneak another 8-yard slant through coverage? Is your second-best player a tight end? The Chiefs keep winning actual ESPYs, but this is not how you win the ESPYs of my heart.
5. Again, they are simply the worst!
First, let me just say again: Bundlerooski.
Bundlerooski.
Don't fight it.
Bundlerooski.
Just let your head sink back into the water.
Bundlerooski.
Bundle-a-rooski.
Bundlerooski-doo!
I'm sorry, you've been whistled for 35 consecutive roughing the passer penalties. 525 yards. Automatic first down.
