Are football fans getting tired of the Kansas City Chiefs? The headlines on your favorite sports news website telling us that they’re only in the Super Bowl because of the refs might suggest, yes.
“They are tired of the Chiefs, they are exhausted that it’s the same matchup from two years ago, and they are fatigued with seeing Patrick Mahomes in commercials, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift storylines, and seeing Swift shown in the luxury suite after everything positive that Kansas City does during the course of games,” said Anthony Amey, a former reporter and anchor at ESPN, who is now an assistant professor of practice for sports media and analytics at Virginia Tech.
Man, why didn’t they have that kind of class when I was an undergrad at UVA a hundred years ago.
I don’t know who I’m more jealous of here – the kids who get to take the class, or Amey, for being paid to teach it.
Back to the Chiefs: dynasties can be good, because they have their fans, and then the rest of us, they’re at least familiar to us, and over time, we can come to develop a healthy hatred.
But the Chiefs are getting what they call in the pro-wrestling business “go home heat,” which is best explained as, We’re tired of rooting against you, we just want you to go away.
It’s similar to recent cases involving the Golden State Warriors and the New England Patriots, the Tom Brady/Bill Belichick vintage.
What surprises Amey is how quickly, and how much, the sentiment against the Chiefs has turned negative.
“Perhaps it says as much about society as a whole than we care to consider and admit: we lose interest quickly these days,” Amey said. “Unfortunately, we may also be losing our ability to embrace the historical element that is before us, which would be a shame if interest in change prevents us from realizing the opportunity we might have to tell stories to future generations about what we’ve witnessed.”
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Chris Graham
