Prediction: Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City cannot possibly lose in Super Bowl
Here’s a bold Super Bowl prediction for you: Patrick Mahomes can’t lose. And neither can Kansas City.
Win or lose this particular game, as big as it is, the superstar quarterback and his adopted hometown will go on, in a stars-aligned relationship that certainly looks long-term and, as with all great ones, lifts each party up.
In only his second year as an NFL starter, Mahomes is becoming an iconic athlete nationally and even internationally, but for Kansas City, it goes way beyond that. For this city, it’s personal.
Is there a Hallmark card for this?
“I think it is almost unique, if you look around the country,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas says of the love affair between Mahomes and Kansas City. “Patrick Mahomes is one of those guys who has this amazing image and presence. He’s a great participant in our community, he’s a great supporter of his colleagues and a great leader of other men.”
“We have someone that we’re beginning to develop a personal relationship with as a town, a civic community. That’s pretty remarkable,” adds Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Joe Reardon. “He’s the personalization of Kansas City, in a way.”
There’s already a debate in football circles nationwide as to where Mahomes ranks in the pantheon of history’s best quarterbacks. But there’s another question here in Kansas City: Is he already the city’s most beloved figure ever?
“I tell you what, he’s getting there,” Lucas says.
The affection is clearly mutual, with Mahomes proclaiming at a Super Bowl press conference in Miami that, “The people are what really drew me to Kansas City. ... I hope I get to play there the rest of my career now.”
One thing football fans outside of Kansas City may only have glimpsed, but which Kansas Citians have come to cherish, is that Mahomes is every bit the person that he is a player. That’s the real foundation of what could be a long-term relationship. Talented players come and go, but this kind of historic ability wrapped up in such four-star character is definitely a keeper.
“It’s few and far between that you get a chance to see special individuals like this young man,” says Visit KC President & CEO Jason Fulvi. “Unfortunately, in our society today, it’s rare. When it’s rare, it becomes incredibly special.”
The side benefits of all this are largely unknowable and likely incalculable. Is there a better role model parents can point to? Is there a better ambassador the city could hire? The guy is a one-man convention and visitors bureau. Well, almost: After it became clear Mahomes would lead the Chiefs to the Super Bowl, the Kansas City Area Development Council decided to fan out its own emissaries to Chiefs watch parties in five major U.S. markets, and employed targeted digital advertising in 18 others across the country, making sure to spread KC heart logos throughout. Downtown hotel rooms for a possible victory parade were starting to sell out even before the weekend.
“The arrival of Patrick Mahomes in KC couldn’t have happened at a better time,” development council President and CEO Tim Cowden told The Star. “Not just for Chiefs fans, but for all of us who market and sell KC to the world everyday.
“Patrick reminds me of the place that KC is becoming. Patrick is the new ‘It’ NFL QB, and the next sports megastar. I bet he would tell you that KC is helping him become the best version of himself, and KC would tell him that he is doing exactly the same for us. He is showing the way for KC to become the next ‘It’ city.”
If being an “It” city means restaurants featuring steaks with 15 seasonings (for Mahomes’ jersey number) or the team’s arrowhead logo seared into them, then Kansas City has arrived.
Cowden and other area officials are shaking their heads in amazement at the potential goodwill this 24-year-old adopted son may spread on behalf of the city over his football career and beyond. How much is that kind of advertising worth?
“I can’t even calculate it,” Mayor Lucas says, noting how his many friends across the country already text him their love for Mahomes. “And frankly, it gets people to take another look at Kansas City and to say, ‘Wow, all right, well maybe the city’s really exciting.”
Reardon especially likes that Mahomes is spreading the gospel of Kansas City to people his age and younger. “I suspect we’re going to have a lot of visitors to Kansas City in the coming several years, and probably new residents that Patrick Mahomes will have a lot to do with.”
Reardon agrees that, beyond the game itself, Mahomes and Kansas City simply can’t lose.
“No. 1, we’re going to win. We have all the tools to win. And we have maybe the best quarterback of all time,” he says. “But the awareness of Kansas City coming into this weekend and going into Sunday is going to be like something we’ve not seen before. You just cannot put a dollar figure on that.”