‘Don’t take it for granted’: Chiefs fans relish new era, quest for Super Bowl three-peat
While the advent of the Swifties has added an entirely unforeseeable synergy and dimension to Chiefs fandom over the last year, another once-preposterous narrative now is part of their collective identity.
Even more than the presence of Taylor Swift fans here because of her relationship with tight end Travis Kelce, that was evident during training camp at Missouri Western.
Whether it’s in the “Kansas City Against The World” T-shirt worn by Overland Park’s Keith Rawson or in the words of Raymore’s Myron Fisher’s to 16-year-old son Xavier — “He doesn’t know what it’s like to have to go through those losing seasons” — there is an abiding sense of how different everything is now than it was during the 50 years between Super Bowls.
“I always wondered would I get a chance to see them win in my lifetime” said Fisher, who was born in 1974.
When it finally happened, he said, he was “jumping up and dancing all over the place.” His son and nieces, he recalled, were looking at him like he was out of his mind.
“You don’t understand,” he remembered telling them.
For sooooo long, any time the Chiefs seemed poised to end the futility, paranoia hovered. When I asked Fisher if he remembered feeling … he finished my sentence for me.
“Something’s going to happen,” he said, laughing.
Meaning something bad.
Now “something’s going to happen” has a whole new context. As in, they’ll just find a way to win it all, as they have in three of the last five seasons.
“I’m expecting that three-peat,” said Lynn “Weirdwolf” Schmidt, whose amiable nature belies his Weirdwolf persona (I first met him in 2016 for a project we did on electric football).
“I have no doubt we’re going to get there,” Schmidt continued. “It’s living the glory years. I thought the glory years were (1969), ‘70. But now, this is truly that.”
That’s quite a revelation for any Chiefs fan, but perhaps all the more for the ones so steeped in the misery. In some ways, Schmidt embodies that: Back in Goessel, his tiny hometown in the middle of Kansas, the first Chiefs game he ever remembers seeing was the Christmas Day 1971 double-overtime playoff loss to the Dolphins.
So the day he became a Chiefs fan is entirely entwined with crying his eyes out and the feeling of a ruined Christmas … and yet a sense of faith that next year would always be different.
“It was almost unreasonable thinking,” he said.
Until it wasn’t any more, a mindset effectively purged by the double-digit comeback in Super Bowl LIV that fundamentally reset what it means to be a Chiefs fan.
“We weren’t in love before; we were ‘in like,’” said Rawson, who attended camp with his wife, Molly Fisher, and son Thomas, who was celebrating his 21st birthday.
As with many other fans, that Super Bowl stressed out Molly Fisher (no relation to Myron and Xavier) as it paved the way to an entirely different perspective.
“Now I’m expecting us to win every time,” she said, “which is also scary.”
Indeed, this can’t last forever.
“Don’t take it for granted,” Jeff Kiel, a New York-native who came to St. Joe to attend his first Chiefs camp, paused to say to Xavier Fisher and his father.
Instead, fans seem to be taking it to heart that these are the good ol’ days — as on display in St. Joseph with a galaxy of fans old and new converging to appreciate a time like no other.
This story was originally published August 15, 2024 at 10:26 AM.