As a stubbornly long-time season ticket holder to the Kansas City Chiefs, I have witnessed the good and great, the bad and sad and most recently the unremittingly ugly at Arrow-through-the-Head Stadium.
True, this is a go-and-have-fun entertainment column, not one about self-inflicted sports torture. But stick with me, even if I appear to be sticking the pointy end of a muddy football tee into my ribcage and twisting it just to see what kind of face I might make.
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jeanne
Brian – Find a tape recorder. Hit the record/play buttons. Read your Chief’s thing into the little hole and send it to NPR.
Beautiful.
craig glazer
Brain, you are right, back in the mid 90’s when the Chiefs were a real team, with Joe,Derrick,Neil,spiderman,Allen and boy we actualy had name players, Nick the kick,Joe Phillips, Dan Sallammooomoo, on and on…back then, on the big tv screen, we had BAYWATCH BABES SAYING HI KC, STANFORDS COMICS LIKE BOB CAT GOLTHWAIT,TOMMY CHONG,KEVIN ‘SAT NIGHT LIVE’ NEALON and more read off the names of the starting line up, jets flew over the stadium, fireworks, skydivers, and even commercial stars like the “I Love You Man” guy would be on the sidelines and more, I actually thought Carl did all that, at the time thought he was a showmen, I heard later and I was part of it, that it was Danny Thum, don’t know but it wasn’t Carl, he’s not a showman…
Well the lights have dimmed, no smoke, no hot Bay Watch girls, Joe has never returned to Arrowhead and now Marcus won’t come in unless he’s paid, odd he was the Tony Gonzalez of KC for five years, now nothin, all gone, so are the playoffs, the sea of red, the noise of the crowd…and most of..gone is the pride, we have lost our city pride due to the Chiefs, Royals, Downtown, and so on…thats really sad…hope it comes back someday…
craig glazer
PS…Brian, Lewis as he admitts, was kinda launched at Stanfords, he played Westport many times, and Overland Park as well as help open the new theatre at Legends when he was a superstar….great guy…he didn’t start with us, but always thanked stanfords even on The Tonight Show with stories about us…cause he worked at Westport as an m.c. feature in the 80’s and early 90’s as a young comic when he was unkown, well he’s known now…
Dexter Morgan
Excellent take on the Arrowhead PA announcer. Spot on. To say he was desperately trying to inject some enthusiasm into the stadium would be an understatement. It almost came off unintentionally amusing if it hadn’t been so incredibly pathetic.
Why does it feel like he was directed by the new management to act that way?
Note to the Chiefs front office: Put a winner on the field and the crowd will wake up. If you build it, they will roar. We’ve done it before. It’s your job to lead us back there again.
Phony enthusiasm from the PA announcer is not how it’s done.
smartman
Need to change the name of our official city song from Kansas City to The Thrill is gone. The Chiefs, Royals, Star, City Hall et. al, are just a reflection of the mediocre cesspool of social encrustation that we’ve become. Lacking in both style and substance and the collective lack of ability to do anything about it. As Trace Adkins says in those fucking awful Chiefs commercials, “we are kansas city.”. At least we ARE NOT Overland Park.
rick
Have faith…it will be back.