Tony Gonzalez shares story of a prank that may have led to a Chiefs player’s release
Chiefs fans could be forgiven for not remembering the name Pat Barnes, a quarterback who was picked by the team in the fourth round of the 1997 NFL Draft.
Barnes never appeared in a regular-season game with the Chiefs, but he saw action in a 1998 preseason game against the Packers in the Tokyo Bowl. His time with the Chiefs ended shortly after that contest, and former Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez believes a prank pulled by his former teammates on the flight back from Japan may have led to Barnes’ release.
Gonzalez shared the story during a chat with Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer a few weeks ago.
There was a big Powerball jackpot at the time, and Chiefs quarterbacks Elvis Grbac and Rich Gannon were pooling their money together for tickets. But Barnes refused to join Grbac and Gannon because he played his own numbers.
At some point, the other quarterbacks got a look at one of Barnes’ tickets and relayed the numbers to linebacker Greg Manusky. The trio decided to pull a practical joke on Barnes.
“It’s after the game and it’s an 11-, 12-hour flight,” Gonzalez recalled. “And I’m sitting right next to Pat Barnes and we’re both in the back in coach. ... And he’s sitting by the window, and he’s got all the lottery tickets laid out in front of him, because it was so big they were going to make the announcement as we were flying back during the flight. ...
“The captain comes on and he goes, ‘Hey, I know some of you guys are Powerball players; the numbers just came out, and we’re going to read them off right now.’ ... (Barnes) got his tickets out and he’s got them in front of him, and the captain starts to read it off, and he starts reading off the numbers one by one by one by one.”
Thing is, Manusky had asked the captain to read off Barnes’ numbers as a joke, and sure enough, the quarterback thought he was a big winner.
“Looking over (at) Pat Barnes ... and all of a sudden, he starts screaming at the top of his lungs. ... It actually started out slow, a crescendo. It’s like, ‘I won! I won! I (freaking) won! I won!’ He looks over at me and says, ‘Get the hell out of the way, I won. I won.’ He like literally pushes me,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez, who wasn’t in on the prank, tried to high-five his teammate for winning what he recalled was about $250 million. But Barnes was in a mood to let everyone know about his good fortune.
“He starts going up and down the aisle and remember everybody’s tired and some people are half-asleep, and he starts going up, ‘I (freaking) won, I won! He’s holding the ticket like he won the Golden Ticket from ‘(Charlie and the) Chocolate Factory.’”
If the story had ended there, it simply would have been a comical moment. But Barnes thought he had enough money to retire and he was going to live out every employee’s dream by telling off his bosses.
“He goes to the front of the plane,” Gonzalez said. “And this is where I didn’t go with him ... but I’d heard that he started yelling at his coaches and he’s like ‘screw football, I’m done, I’m out of here, I hate this stuff. Screw you. Screw you.’ Pointing at coaches. And then at that point, that’s where Elvis and Rich were like, they jumped on him, like tackled him and said, ‘It was a joke. It was a joke.’”
One of the people at the front of the plane, Gonzalez said, was Lamar Hunt, who owned the team at the time. The Packers won the game 27-24 in overtime, but the biggest loser was probably Barnes.
“I felt so bad for him,” Gonzalez said, “and then sure enough he got cut a couple of weeks later.”
Barnes was released when the Chiefs signed Todd Collins.
I didn’t embed the tweet because there is quite a bit of cursing, but this is the link to Gonzalez telling the story.
