PowerPlay Magazine

Have you ever been frustrated with how your favorite sports team is being managed?  Are you a long suffering fan that has had enough?  Does it sometimes feel like there's nothing YOU can do to help turn things around?  Fear not faithful fan, you CAN make a difference, and last year fans of the Kansas City Chiefs of the NFL proved it with the Save Our Chiefs campaign.  I'll be using the example of the Chiefs, but I believe what the KC fans managed to accomplish could be applied to any professional sports franchise, and what they accomplished is nothing short of remarkable.


Before I get in to the fan movement, I'll give you a brief history of the storied franchise to provide some context.  The Chiefs are an historic football team.  They were originally founded by a man named Lamar Hunt in Dallas as the Texans.  They were one of the founding teams of the American Football League, which was created by Hunt himself to compete with the NFL after he was repeatedly denied a franchise in the National League.  A lot of people expected the AFL to fail, but infact it did quite well.  In 1963 the AFL Champion Dallas Texans moved from Dallas to Kansas City and became known as the Chiefs.  Three years later, in 1966 Lamar Hunt scored a major victory for the AFL when a deal was reached between the AFL and the NFL to have a world championship in which the champion of the American League would face the champion of the National League.  The game would later be named the "Super Bowl" which Hunt came up with himself after watching his daughter play with a "super ball".  The Chiefs would go on to win the American League and face the Green Bay Packers of the NFL in the first ever Super Bowl. They lost a hard fought battle, but a new tradition was born. In 1970 the NFL approached the AFL about merging the leagues as it feared the AFL would start to steal from its talent base.  A deal was reached, and  Lamar Hunt had finally succeeded in getting the NFL team he always wanted.


Now to get back to the Save Our Chiefs movement, we'll jump ahead a few decades.  In 2006 Lamar Hunt passed away, leaving the Chiefs to his kids.  His son Clark (who also went on to become a founding owner of MLS) took over as Chairman and CEO of the Chiefs. Things started to go downhill in 2007 when the Chiefs finished with a record of 4 wins and 12 losses and Clark promised sweeping changes.  He would hire the Vice President of Player Operations from the perennial favorites the New England Patriots to take over as General Manager of the Chiefs.  It was promised to Chiefs fans that Pioli would bring the same kind of winning atmosphere that the Patriots had been enjoying.  What nobody was aware of, was just how much Pioli had actually been riding the coat tails of New England GM and all around football wizard Bill Belichick.  After he took over the Chiefs it started to become abundantly clear to fans that Pioli had no idea what he was doing without Belichick holding his hand.  He signed New England backup QB Matt Cassel to be the Chiefs new starter, and hired Todd Haley to become the new coach.  Haley's hot-headed approach to coaching just simply didn't reach the players, and Matt Cassel was looking more and more like he didn't belong as a starting Quarterback in the NFL.  It was a dark time for the Chiefs, who would have two two-win seasons, and two four-win seasons in the years between 2007 and 2012, being outscored by more than 14 points in 19 of 57 contests under the Pioli regime. 

The team Lamar Hunt once fought so hard for had become a laughing stock in the league. Year after year the losses piled up, and I can assure you (being a Chiefs fan myself) it was HARD to watch. After public outcry, the Chiefs fired Todd Haley as coach and replaced him with defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel, who just simply wasn't qualified to be a head coach in the NFL anymore.  People began questioning Clark Hunt's commitment to his father's team.  That's when the fans, fed up with the joke that was their once proud team took matters into their own hands.


In 2012 a Chiefs fan named Marty McDonald had enough when the team got off to another poor start.  He dug into his own pocket and hired an airplane to fly a banner over Arrowhead Stadium pleading for changes.  The banner read "We deserve better - Fire Pioli - Bench Cassel".  The banner intrigued many of KC's defeated fans, and people began wondering who was behind the protest.  During the following home game another banner flew overhead "Return Hope - Fire Pioli - SaveOurChiefs.com".  McDonald started a website, a facebook page, and a twitter account under the title SaveOurChiefs.  Within a couple weeks, the twitter account had 104 000 followers. More and more fans began jumping on board, and even began sending money, enough to fly more banners over every home game. As popularity in the campaign reached an all-time high, Save Our Chiefs organized a blackout of their stadium on November 18th, 2012.  They encouraged fans to wear black to the game as a sign of mourning for the once great franchise.  Pundits and media thought the idea would fail, but they were wrong. As the game was broadcast on TV, at least 50% of the stadium was black, with some of the only "chiefs red" seen in the crowd coming from the empty seats of fans who chose not to attend.  A clear message was being sent to ownership.

The campaign was put on hold for a week  in December 2012 when the Chiefs hit rock bottom. Linebacker Jovan Belcher shot and killed the mother of his child, then drove to the Chiefs facility and shot himself infront of head coach Romeo Crennel and GM Scott Pioli.  Out of respect for everyone involved, Save Our Chiefs cancelled the aerial fly-overs for the following home game, but not wanting to lose ground on what they had accomplished came back strong the following week.  Big media outlets began taking notice, and reports on the campaign began springing up everywhere, becoming a genuine thorn in the side of the Kansas City Chiefs organization.


Last season concluded with KC being the worst team in the NFL.  They had a measley 2-14 record, were losing fans and money on merchandising.  Clark Hunt was forced to start listening to the fans.  He wanted to show that he did care about his fathers team and quietly started to lay out the ground work for the changes listed on the banners. He started taking away some of the responsibilities of Pioli and taking over some of the managing duties himself.  In January he hired NFL legend Andy Reid to take over as head coach, and gave him the reigns to the whole team, allowing him to put in place his own manager, replacing the fraud Scott Pioli.  Quarterback Matt Cassel was released. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, quarterback Alex Smith had been replaced by Colin Kaepernick through no fault of his own.  Smith had sustained a concussion, allowing Kaepernick to take over at the starter position.  Kaepernick performed well enough, that when Smith returned from injury San Francisco didn't want to upset the chemistry of the team, and decided to stick with Kaepernick.  Smith was looking for a new home, and Kansas City was looking for a new quarterback. It turned out to be a match made in heaven.


After months of flying banners and organizing other protests the fans had finally got through to Clark Hunt.  They got everything they wanted.  Fire Pioli...check...Bench Cassel...check.  The Save Our Chiefs campaign had come through.  Chiefs fans now had a renewed sense of hope for their beloved team, things seemed to be heading in the right direction. Many fans were expecting a transition period while Andy Reid repaired the damage done by Pioli, and hoped that in a few years the team would slowly get back to being a contender.  What they weren't expecting was how rapid and dramatic the turn around would be.  At the time of writing this article the Chiefs are 8-0 on the season. Only one season removed from that terrible 2-14 season, Andy Reid and Alex Smith have turned the team in to a winner.  They are the last remaining undefeated team and have become a real rags to riches cinderella story in the NFL.


I wanted to tell you the story of Save Our Chiefs to show you, the die hard sports fan that you can make a difference.  You don't have to sit there and watch your favorite team be run in to the ground.  In the end, the fans drive the team, they pay the bills.  If you're vocal enough,  like Marty McDonald from Save Our Chiefs, eventually you will be heard.  Thanks to great fans like him, I don't get laughed at when I wear my Chiefs jersey out in public anymore.