The party begins! Chiefs fans pour into Arrowhead before championship against Titans
For the record — because Sunday may be a historic day in Kansas City — Mark Lambeth of Louisburg, and his buddy Jim Price were the first die-hard Kansas City Chiefs fans to pull up to Gate 5 to wait outside Arrowhead Stadium in sub-freezing temperatures.
Their time: midnight Saturday — eight hours before the gates would open and 14 hours before kickoff at the AFC Championship game against the Tennessee Titans. To be decided in the game: Who will be Super Bowl bound?
Lambeth, 51 and Price of Stillwell, rolled up in their white RV, soon to expect a tailgating crowd of 18 people.
Dwain and Theresa McClure of Oskaloosa, Iowa, soon followed in a tiny sedan.
“We left home last night at 9:30,” Dwain McClure said. Arrived at 1:24.” Lambeth and the McClures have been tailgating together for a decade.
“You hear a drum start pounding. Then the music,” said Theresa McClure. “May as well not sleep.” Still, some tried, huddled in their cars and trucks and RVs in a line that by 7 a.m. spread four lanes across and what seemed a quarter-mile long.
Shannon Coleman, 43, of Wichita, in the vanguard of the soon-to-arrive “Gate 5 Squad” had settled in at 2:45 a.m.
The sun rose on Arrowhead in the biting cold with a Chiefs golden glow, turning into a cloudless blue sky.
Coleman and his friends set up a red tent and breakfast before breaking down their parking lot campsite prior to the gates rising. Expected to go up at 9 a.m., they rose minutes after 8. Fans poured through like in a land rush.
Tents rose quickly. Grills heated up.
“You want to know the score?” McClure offered. Lambeth predicted a Chiefs victory by three touchdowns. McClure said it would be 31-21, or close to that.
Fans spread throughout the parking lot. The sun rose higher in the sky.
This story was originally published January 19, 2020 at 9:33 AM with the headline "The party begins! Chiefs fans pour into Arrowhead before championship against Titans."
