Pushed Aside

Last year I made my way through Kansas City for the Week No. 2 game between the Chiefs and the Raiders. I watched from the press box (alongside Bob) how the turmoil-filled, Lane Kiffin-led, Oakland squad punished the Chiefs’ D with 300 yards on the ground. I spent the waning seconds of the contest trying to convince myself that I had seen the worst thing of the day. Or so I thought.

Right around the time Bob was headed to the locker room I remained in the empty media area looking to gather one last panoramic glimpse of the Truman Sports Complex’s main jewel before I left, when all of a sudden, I spotted a couple of Raiders – still on the field well over 30 minutes after the final whistle – pulling some sort of Lambeau Leap with a small crowd of Oakland fans that stayed in the stands after the game. That scene alone was unusual enough to catch my attention, but when I turned around and saw Carl Peterson emerging in the luxury box next to my right, standing alone, and gazing at the whole spectacle with a distraught look on his face, I could get a clearer view of the whole picture.

Not against the Raiders … but mainly, not at our house.

This weekend, the Chiefs found themselves in new territory, attempting to build something from proverbial ground zero. Through all the 20 seasons that I have followed Kansas City’s football team, there have been different players, different coaches and most recently, different administrations. But above everything, there was one constant: a sold-out Arrowhead Stadium. Only that, this time around, it was different.

On Friday, Clark Hunt put the finishing touches in a statement that got a special headline all across the gridiron world. After 19 years and 156 consecutive regular season and post-season sellouts, the football-entrusted heir to Lamar Hunt’s legacy decided to cut the cord with the last remaining mainstay from the renaissance era of the franchise.

As it has been documented in detail, Carl Peterson’s greatest accomplishment during his tenure as President of the Red and Gold wasn’t that he drafted Derrick Thomas; nor that Kansas City won 100 games during the 90’s; nor that the Chiefs reached the only AFC Championship Game they have ever played on. No, his greatest feat consisted in making a once-proud football city relevant again as a byproduct of doing the right things.

Those that have experienced what a tailgate is, know for sure what I’m talking about; the numerous hundreds that have stuck through thick and thin are nodding their heads in agreement; and the ones that have belonged long enough to get a precise pulse of what makes Kansas Citians tick, surely understand why the following constitutes the season’s biggest loss.

Numbers never lie and nothing reflects the state of a team like its attendance figures. Why? Because in order to keep the seats filled, the product on the field must be competitive. Ultimately – even with all his previous achievements – Peterson left because the latest outcomes were not satisfying or successful. Let’s face it, football has a business side where you’re only as good as your last act. When everybody with power resolved to let the first home TV blackout in 19 seasons happen, that spoke volumes about the value of the ‘09 Kansas City Chiefs.

Did money play a factor? Absolutely. Certainly this wasn’t a move made unilaterally by the younger Hunt; the lack of performance on the football field spawned a shortage of interest in the fans that provided the spark to detonate this specific shortcoming. Appropriately, there was one common ground where the interests of both the ownership and the fandom got together to finally let go of the sellout streak; and in the end, it can all be traced to a matter of pride. They just got tired of being pushed around.

Explained endlessly in earlier opportunities, football is a game that revolves around imposing your will. The side that controls the trenches is more likely to end up in the favorable side of the scoreboard than the one that gets manhandled at the line of scrimmage. Nevertheless, when you get the football systematically rammed down your throat with nothing but the simplest of executions – the running play – that means you are not rising up to the challenge.

Maybe that’s exactly the motive behind Clark Hunt’s actions. 245 rushing yards by a then 7-4 Broncos team were hard to swallow; but 200 given up to the 4-8 Buffalo Bills were more than enough to handle. And by failing to pick up the tab for the last regular season game of the year, Hunt wanted to see who would step up to avoid another embarrassing performance. Think about it. With just a few highlights on the year, why not sustain the sellout streak? Why not go for it with only one more home game left in the season? Why not one more time to complete a perfect audience score throughout a full decade?

I found interesting that almost simultaneous to the announcement of the local TV snub, Scott Pioli rose up to claim that he sees improvement in Todd Haley. I found encouraging that Matt Cassel contributed with a persistent outing. I’m delighted that Jamaal Charles continues to make a case to be considered a building block. I was discouraged to see Jerome Harrison pulling a Moses and run through the Chiefs’ Red Sea for 286 of the 351 yards that the Browns got on Sunday afternoon. If giving something up like lifting a blackout is necessary to attain greater things in the future, so be it. I’ll gladly accept trading off the attendance record to set the basis for potential W’s. And in hindsight, we’re better off that way, ’cause in the end, the final tally of assistance to a venue should be an indication of the number of people that WANTED to be there, and not because of the numeral on a stat sheet. That’s the real value of a statistic.

The conclusion is nothing extraordinary. For Scott Pioli, Todd Haley, and the rest of the organization, the message is very clear. They need to get people that will control the pace on both sides of the line of scrimmage (especially on defense.) They need to acquire individuals that can create mayhem on the opposing front. Most importantly, in a metaphoric way, they need to stand up for themselves and stop being shoved around because the laws of physics are unforgiving. As long as they continue to endure being pushed around by their rivals – at their own home and before their faithful – the fans will execute an equal reaction, and will continue to push them aside.

If they don’t correct that soon, with every passing minute, it will become harder to get them back.