The man behind Chiefs mascot KC Wolf personifies a valiant success story
The man who dresses as KC Wolf for a living once received a request to appear at a funeral.
In costume.
They wanted him to be a pallbearer — wanted a googly-eyed mascot to help carry the body of a Chiefs fan.
Dan Meers politely declined. “That big stupid grin,” he explained. “That’s not gonna go away.” Somehow it just didn’t feel appropriate for a funeral.
It’s a simple story, almost flattering in retrospect. But it’s not without meaning.
The bigger picture formed 30 years ago, when, shortly after taking over as the Chiefs’ president and general manager, Carl Peterson promised to re-engage the team with Kansas City fans. The franchise created a 7-foot wolf as part of that project — a nod to the Woflpack, a group of rowdy fans who had occupied the old Municipal Stadium.
It worked. The character has since become ingrained in the fabric of Chiefs culture, well-known for his on-field antics and stunts that represent only a smidgen of the reason for the mascot’s persistence.
The longevity traces to one thing: The man underneath the thirty-some pounds of fur.
Thirty years ... and counting
You’d be surprised to see the man inside the costume for the first time. Meers in the wolf suit couldn’t be more of a departure from the signature look of Meers at his day job.
OK, pretty much anyone’s daytime appearance would represent a departure from KC Wolf’s 85-inch hips and size-23 shoes. But when Meers emerges from the body, the contrast of his thin frame is quite obvious.
His personality, though? He’s every bit the good-natured, positive-outlook-on-life character you see inside Arrowhead Stadium on Sundays in the fall.
“I have the same goal every day when I get out of bed,” he says. “I want to get up, go out and love other people. Not judge other people — we’re way too good at doing that — but just go out and love other people.”
Thirty years he’s been doing this. Three full decades. The Chiefs acknowledged the anniversary this week of what’s believed to be the longest-running such gig in the NFL.
A man who went to the University of Missouri planning to get into broadcast journalism or communications landed this job before he had technically even graduated from college, skipping the minor-league route of his peers. How? In his job interview, he outlined the essence of whom KC Wolf has become outside the arena of football.
More on that later.
First, a story you’ve probably heard, at least in parts. A story that encapsulates the man more than the mascot’s persona.
Meers is willing to try most anything once. The job requires a sense of adventure, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. So in 2013, he ziplined across the stadium before a game. The crowd loved it. “We’ve gotta do that again,” he told those around him.
For the second attempt, they stretched the zipline from one side of Arrowhead Stadium to the other, using the venue’s lights as attachments. They added a bungee jump at the start of the routine. But during a practice run, the line had too much slack. When Meers jumped, he fell 70-some feet before crashing into the upper-deck seating, section 324.
He broke seven ribs, cracked his tailbone and suffered a collapsed lung. He will forever have two titanium rods lodged in his back.
“I had my doubts,” Meers said of whether his career would survive the fall. “I knew it was going to take a lot to recover.”
And not just physically. A man of faith struggled to understand the reasons for the accident.
But then he remembered his motive for jumping into all of this in the first place.
‘Mascot on a Mission’
Meers, 53, had never planned on becoming a mascot, but he spotted a tryout for Mizzou’s Truman the Tiger in a newspaper and thought he’d give it a go. He parlayed that into a part-time gig as Fredbird, the mascot for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team.
The Chiefs called before he had completed his first season there, and before he had earned his college diploma. They’d had this idea for KC Wolf — even trotted him out for games in 1989 — but they wanted a larger presence than some afternoon kickoffs.
During his interview, Meers outlined the blueprint for what he envisioned for KC Wolf. He’d be more than a game-day character. More true to his own character.
In Meers’ greatest in-costume moments, KC Wolf is playfully heckling the opposition during pregame stunts, taking photos with fans throughout the concourse or banging his massive animal head against the goalpost when things aren’t going so well. He’s become more mobile than ever — he runs to the scoring end of the field when the Chiefs reach the end zone, and well, they’re more of a quick-strike offense now than in any of his previous 29 years. Sometimes it’s a dead sprint in his 32-pound getup.
But that’s the job a handful of times each season — he typically attends only the Chiefs’ home dates, though a trip to Miami for this year’s Super Bowl realized a long-awaited dream.
The real job is what Meers diagrammed in that fateful interview. He wanted KC Wolf to become a platform to deliver messages to children, a mantra he has never ceased striving to reach. He makes more than 600 appearances annually throughout the community, and a whole host of them are inside schools.
He cycles through a half-dozen programs focused on reading, nutrition and exercise, anti-bullying, character-building, test-taking and saying no to drugs. He’s visited classrooms and orphanages in too many countries to count, including India and several in Africa last year.
“The most rewarding part of the job,” he says, “is the work I do away from the stadium.”
It’s what brought him back from disaster seven years ago. The fall gave him some free time. Meers decided to write a book about his life, appropriately titled, “Wolves Can’t Fly.”
He’s donated all of the proceeds to charity, a number reaching $150,000. Homeless shelters and orphanages have received the bulk of the money.
It renewed his purpose, he said, and in December he published another book, “Mascot on a Mission.”
Years later, he looks back on a life-changing moment finally understanding that the reason it happened mirrors the one that prompted him to embark on this career long ago.
One more way to give back.
“It puts life in perspective in a hurry,” he says. “One day, when my life story is complete, when people are standing around at my funeral, I couldn’t care less if they know how many years I went running around as a mascot.
“If the only thing people say about me at my funeral is I loved people and loved making people happy, I’m good with that.”