Here’s how the Chiefs will celebrate their Super Bowl championship with you, the fans
One morning recently, as some 100 Chiefs players, coaches and personnel walked onto the field for yet another day of training camp, they were greeted by a new addition.
More precisely, a new logo rested on the side of their indoor practice facility, facing the adjacent outdoor fields.
Super Bowl CHAMPIONS, it reads.
IV
LIV.
Even as this team tries its best to focus exclusively on 2020, a reminder of the 2019 season will be forever constant.
Maybe it’s by design.
“It’s special, man. It took us 50 years to get it — 50 years,” defensive tackle Chris Jones said. “When you look at it, it makes you want to reach that goal again.
“When you see that you were able to accomplish that and look at all the hard work you put in last year, it makes you want to do it again this year. You have that hunger even more. For me, it’s a little bit of motivation. It makes me want to reach that goal again.”
After a parade through the streets of downtown Kansas City in February, the first Super Bowl celebration in half a century took a hiatus. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, there was no trip to the White House, and so few public community appearances with the Lombardi Trophy.
The reminders came mostly on TV, with local and national networks alike replaying how it all went down. The comeback against Houston. The AFC Championship Game against Tennessee. The fourth-quarter comeback to beat the San Francisco 49ers on a February evening in Miami.
But now, the reminders are tangible. As fans pass through the Arrowhead Stadium parking lots this season, they will notice banners flanking both sides of light poles — one side is the Super Bowl emblem with a player; on the other, an urging to wear a mask and maintain social distance.
For players, it comes in the form of championship rings and a couple of banners, one inside the practice facility and another as they exit the tunnel at the 50-yard line to take the field.
For 5,000 fans, it arrived on Aug. 29 with a trip to Arrowhead Stadium for the final day of training camp, when the Chiefs raised a new flag above the west end zone.
And on opening night on Sept. 10 against the Texans, the Chiefs will drop the banner at Arrowhead Stadium, an event that will host a venue at 22% of its usual fan capacity because of COVID-19 protocols.
It’s far from the same as a full house. But it’s something — and it played a factor in the Chiefs becoming one of the first NFL teams to announce their intentions to have fans in the stands during the league’s opening week.
“We’re raising a banner on Sept. 10. We want our fans to be part of that,” Chiefs team president Mark Donovan said. “We’re really struggling with the fact that only 16,000 of them are going to be able to be part of that live and in person. But that’s a lifelong memory.
“It’s gonna be different. It’s not going to be exactly what we want it to be. But it is something that was really important to us as a franchise, and I’ll speak for the Hunt family on that. That was a big driver — figure out a way to get our fans in safely. They need to be part of this.”