Mayor and Chiefs agree: If Kansas City wins Super Bowl, COVID means no parade, for now
Should the Kansas City Chiefs prevail in the Super Bowl for the second year in a row — knock on wood — the fanfare will have to wait.
Mayor Quinton Lucas, Chiefs officials and the Kansas City Sports Commission announced jointly on Monday that there will not be a parade like the one that brought hundreds of thousands of fans downtown last year.
“We hope that this journey ends with a victory in Tampa and if that’s the case, we will continue to work with the experts to celebrate safely when the time is appropriate,” Chiefs president Mark Donovan said in a release.
Officials left open the possibility of celebrating sometime down the road.
“While we all wish we could celebrate a Super Bowl win down Grand Boulevard again with hundreds of thousands of fans, it would be inappropriate and irresponsible to put our players’ and fans’ safety at risk by hosting an in-person celebration,” Lucas said in the statement. “We are still fighting a pandemic that has already taken nearly two thousand lives in our region alone, and our top priority will continue to be keeping our region safe.”
Lucas added: “As Chiefs Kingdom has done all season long, we look forward to responsibly cheering on our Chiefs to another Super Bowl win.”
The Chiefs defeated the Buffalo Bills 38-24 Sunday to advance to their second Super Bowl in as many years. They face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the new home of quarterback Tom Brady, perhaps football’s most hated man. The matchup pits Patrick Mahomes, the youngest quarterback ever with both regular season and Super Bowl MVP trophies, against the time-tested Brady.
Kathy Nelson, president and CEO of the Kansas City Sports Commission, said the group is disappointed there won’t be a parade.
“Should the opportunity for celebration present itself, we are considering some options for the future when it is once again safe to gather,” Nelson said. “But we want to encourage everyone to focus on cheering the Chiefs to victory safely and to follow the health and safety guidelines that are currently in place.”
Lucas said last week that a traditional parade wouldn’t happen, but he left open the possibility of some kind of celebration, perhaps some sort of festivities at Arrowhead Stadium, with limited capacity. On Monday, however, there were no specific plans in place for such a celebration should the Chiefs win.
Last year’s parade came just weeks before the city shut down to slow the spread of the then-new COVID-19 pandemic. It’s one of the last moments that felt normal before the dread of the spreading virus set in, Lucas told The Star last year.
A gathering that size would be nearly impossible to keep safe and likely become a superspreader event.
Last week, after Lucas said a parade was unlikely, the three-member Cass County Commission sent a letter to Donovan saying their county would like to host a victory parade.
“While we share the mayor’s optimism for another Chiefs Super Bowl win, we do not support his preemptive cancellation,” the letter said. Cass County, south of Jackson County, is notably one of the few areas in the region without a mask mandate.
On Friday, the metro added 499 new cases of COVID-19, which is down from peaks around the holidays, but still far higher than case totals last spring and summer. The virus has killed 1,633 people in the metropolitan area.
