Amid the anguish and deprivation of 2020, Chiefs were a guiding light through it all
As Chiefs coach Andy Reid said goodbye at the end of a Zoom interview with reporters this week, he offered one last thought: “I’m going to keep telling you to have a Happy New Year. We’ve got to get this thing straightened out, right?”
Presumably, he was talking not about his mesmerizing Chiefs and their recent flirtations with actually losing a game, but about this year of desolation and deprivation for so many amid the pandemic.
Yet a much-anticipated flip of the calendar to 2021 Thursday night/Friday morning also served as a reminder of a crucial and soothing role Reid and the Chiefs have played for so many along the way to at least this symbolic turn to a semblance of normalcy.
The Chiefs helped many of us across at least this incremental psychological goalline.
You could surmise this through soaring TV ratings, which counted Kansas City atop the NFL for local ratings in home markets at least through Week 14. And sense it through your own anecdotal evidence, whether in shared moments watching the games together in person and via social media or the time and space they consume in conversations.
And you can quantify it through logic and science … with a dollop of personal touch.
Daniel Wann is a professor of psychology at Murray State who researches the psychology of sports fandom, grew up in Overland Park and still has family all over the area.
As a Chiefs fan, he might rather have seen them return to the Super Bowl in fewer than 50 years. But he has come to believe this was the optimal year for that dramatic return since it has vital extra resonance.
The half-century of pent-up frustration released didn’t just vanish into the ether; it’s effectively an active ingredient, still swirling as a reminder of the possible in a time when so much seems impossible.
You might not be able to go to a restaurant, or feel right about it. Same when it comes to a plane or seeing family. But if you’re a serious Chiefs fan right now, he said, “you’re having a hard time feeling alone.”
Because the sense of connectivity surges in peak times like this, even if we are more isolated physically than normally.
“That’s so powerful; that’s one of the driving factors that we have for human psychological needs, the need for meaning,” said Wann, co-author of Sports Fans: The Psychology And Social Impact of Fandom. “We seek out activities that give us purpose, that give us joy. Well, I mean, where is there greater purpose and greater joy than the Chiefs right now?”
In general, a common motivation for being a sports fan is escape and distraction from stress, said Christian End, a social psychologist who studies fan behavior at Xavier University.
In times like these, he added, they might provide liberation in a different sort of way: lifted from the four walls of your home when we might otherwise feel trapped within.
More specifically, if you’re a diehard Chiefs fan, particularly one living in Kansas City, Wann said, the research makes this clear: You’re actually apt to be experiencing less loneliness and depression, higher self-esteem and more social cohesion than you otherwise would be.
It’s a “veritable crockpot of different positive well-being indices,” Wann said, adding, “And if you’re (experiencing) that during a pandemic, gosh it’s just that much better, right? When is there a greater need for well-being than when you’re facing a pandemic?”
Alas, even as we can hope there has been some consolation for Chiefs fans who have suffered mightily, nothing offsets the tragedy of deaths, hospitalizations, jobs lost, businesses gone under, evictions and other fallout from the pandemic.
Still, as we stare straight into the eyes of a mental health crisis, there’s a certain emotional and psychological nourishment that can come with a captivating happening to look forward to every week.
And that’s something the Chiefs endlessly have provided throughout the calendar — even in an offseason marked by remarkable investments in their future with long-term contracts for Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Chris Jones. Reflective of harmony atop the organization, kudos to owner Clark Hunt for setting the tone and to president Mark Donovan and general manager Brett Veach for making those realities.
Central to the broader point, the Chiefs played 18 games this calendar year and won 17 of them.
That includes three intoxicating postseason rallies from double-digit deficits to win the Super Bowl. And it includes the encore of a 14-1 regular season in 2020 (with the finale against the Los Angeles Chargers coming Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium), a campaign marked by winning their last seven games by a total of 27 points.
Consider that Mahomes embodies a mythical figure, the sort you might once have heard tall tales about but knew couldn’t possibly exist, who has come to carry a mystical presence in collaboration with Reid. Mahomes really is here for you — and another thing to be grateful for is that we didn’t have a season of his life just stripped away at the same time Reid and Veach’s futures here also were reiterated with extensions.
Fold in an exhilarating cast of characters and personalities like Kelce, Jones, Tyreek Hill, Tyrann Mathieu, Frank Clark and others with a penchant to make the thrilling routine.
Why would you ever look away?
“It’s not just the end of the movie that we like; it’s the whole movie that we like,” said Wann, who earned his doctorate in social psychology from the University of Kansas. “It’s not just the last hill on a rollercoaster that people like. It’s the entire ride.”
He later added, “So it’s ‘let’s see which arm Mahomes passes with this time.’ Or ‘let’s see what kind of crazy play they can come up with. Wait a minute, you mean Kelce has the football now?’ It’s kind of like must-see TV. And that only adds to the spectacle.”
Moreover, the Chiefs not only seem charmed, but largely are charming. That extends even to one who looms large in absentia this season: guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, a medical doctor who opted out to stay home in Canada on the front lines against COVID.
He’s part of their DNA, including a certain part of their makeup that suggests they’re in this with us.
Collectively, they’ve prominently stood for getting out the vote and helping those in need. By all appearances and results, they’ve generally modeled masking and other behaviors designed to try to safely navigate the COVID-19 coronavirus.
The likeability quotient is meaningful in itself. While Wann notes that fan bases typically are adept at excusing bad behavior when it happens, it just means more when it doesn’t require a blind eye.
“The best winning is character winning,” he said. “And fans get that. So they can be proud not just of the outcome, not just of the process, but literally of the individual. And that makes people happy.”
Put it all together and you’ve got a recipe for endless entertainment, diversion, celebration, self-esteem and, really, a form of communion for a community.
The dynamics are at the crux of what sports psychologists have long called “basking in reflected glory,” aka, BIRG-ing. Who we are and how we feel about ourselves can be profoundly impacted by how we feel about what we belong to or identify with.
In some ways, that’s all amplified and accelerated by the dire circumstances of 2020 when some of our other options for attaining or pointing to success may be constrained, End said: Whether it’s in any number of issues at work, including lost jobs, or hard times at home or reduced sports activities for our children, chances are you may be looking for something else to help you feel proud and successful.
Presto, here were the Chiefs, surely part of a portal to 2021 for many of those fortunate enough not to be directly affected by the virus and perhaps to some degree even for some that have been.
They followed up a Super Bowl by continuing to win in ways the franchise never had before, even if they keep you in suspense to the end, to become a team braced to be the first to repeat as Super Bowl champions in 15 years.
That may or may not come to pass, and at this stage the psychological impact on fans of anything less than a repeat seems problematic.
But they’ve helped us remember that life goes on even when so much around us is warped and bleak. And even when we’ve questioned whether this is appropriate or feasible.
With the system seeming to break down around the NFL weeks ago, as recently as Dec. 2, The New York Times called for stopping play until next season in a “Sports Of The Times” column by Kurt Streeter headlined, “Do We Need Football in America This Badly?”
But if the games aren’t “essential,” as the column suggested, it’s hard to deny they’ve made for something approaching urgent all over a nation in chaos yearning for normalcy.
And in the case of the Chiefs, providing something approaching real-time fantasy after decades of inflicting exasperation and anguish.
In some ways, the games themselves are the thing, Wann says.
But the Chiefs have ladeled some icing over it, icing that makes this what he calls “the best of all worlds” for their fans at a time so much of the world is in distress.
“You can’t overstate it,” Wann said. “... People who are Chief fans can look back on 2020 and at least smile about one thing:
“There was at least one bright shining moment in their lives. And that was their love of the Chiefs.”