KC fans have a ‘polarizing’ opinion of Chiefs radio broadcasters, survey finds
The website Awful Announcing in the past has asked fans to assign grades to the broadcast teams for their favorite baseball clubs. It then took those responses and ranked the announcers from first to 30th.
For the first time, the site sought fan input on NFL radio broadcasters to give grades “from A to F and, if desired, provide comments on individual teams. We then converted the letter grades from those responses to numerical grades, assigning A = 4 and F = 0, and ranked the booths by average grade.”
The Chiefs’ Mitch Holthus and Danan Hughes ranked 14th with the most common grade being an A. They had an overall score of 2.42. Only three broadcast teams had a score above 3.
Awful Announcing’s Andrew Bucholtz wrote: “The Chiefs’ group was more polarizing than many in this poll. They earned 36 As on 113 votes, along with 12 Ds and 17 Fs.”
The majority of the divide was over Holthus, who has been the lead radio broadcaster for Chiefs games since 1994.
Bucholtz wrote: “There was a fair bit of praise for him, including: ‘I’ll never be unbiased on this, but Mitch’s voice holds a foundational place in my brain and heart,’ ‘Mitch is the GOAT,’ ‘solid play-by-play description,’ and ‘still as good as they come.’
“However, others were more critical of Holthus. Lines there included, ‘Mitch has been bad forever. Just yelling and silly catchphrases,’ and ‘At one point in time, Holthus was probably a good announcer, but that time is long, long, past. He has devolved into a one-man circus of shouting nonsensical catchphrases like he’s trying out to be on SportsCenter in 1995.’”
Here’s the thing about Holthus: Even his critics had to love his call after the Chiefs advanced to Super Bowl LVII:
“You can doubt the Chiefs, you can dislike the Chiefs, you can disrespect the Chiefs, but you’re gonna have to deal with the Chiefs!”
You can read more at awfulannouncing.com about what was written about Hughes and see the full NFL rankings.
This story was originally published December 17, 2025 at 9:49 AM.
