Preview: On Art and Sports: Notes from the Kansas City Chiefs 2023 Season

I used to think there was no city that identified as strongly with its sports teams as Boston. To be from Boston was to be of the Red Sox and its illustrious curse, the Celtics and the glory days of Larry Bird, the reliable dominance of Tom Brady’s Patriots. Even if you weren’t a sports fan, you couldn’t avoid its rhythm in the city: games were broadcast in every bar and restaurant, Red Sox t-shirts and baseball caps were as common as parkas and snow boots, evening commutes—already fraught with a delicate mass transit system and roads designed by cows—were crushed under the influx of Red Sox spectators making their way to Fenway Park.

I was never a sports fan. This made me an outsider among my family of athletes and in a city whose sports tradition was as iconic as our accent. I was an artist. I believed in the power of art as a tool for empathy and connection, a disciplined practice that artists used to create a transcendent experience, something that provided meaning to the seeming randomness of our lives. I didn’t understand sports, its tribal nature and its rivalries, and it seemed like a vehicle for division and violence—all over a game. But I took a “Live and Let Live” attitude and tolerated it.

Then, I moved to Kansas City.

It didn’t occur to me that Boston’s sports fandom could be eclipsed until I moved to Middle America. Kansas City’s sweltering summers gave way to a red and yellow fall. Not just the foliage in the trees, but the red tide of the Kansas City Chiefs. Chiefs banners adorned street poles. Drivers mounted flags on their cars to celebrate game day. Bakeries sold cupcakes and cookies decorated with red and yellow icing. Coffee shops designed specialty Chiefs-themed lattes and a local dairy farm stocked grocery stores with a special edition Chiefs red velvet milk. People wore jerseys emblazoned Mahomes and Kelce and Rice or red t-shirts with slogans: Sunday Funday. Red Kingdom. Run It Back. The city’s fountains and downtown landmarks were illuminated in a red glow. Even the library adopted a mascot, “Andy Read,” an illustrated version of the Chief’s head coach with his trademark headset and a book in place of his walrus mustache.

It felt fanatical in the purest sense of the word.

It was beyond a hobby or interest—it was a way of life.

When I expressed that I wasn’t a sports fan, people would react with the same slack-jawed incredulity as when they realized I was a married woman in my 30’s without children. Why wouldn’t you want to experience this joy?

Maybe this perpetual, city-wide pep rally would have felt justifiable if it didn’t seem to gloss over serious local issues that weren’t being addressed: Kansas City is consistently ranked among the most dangerous cities in the country. We have an unreconciled history of redlining that continues to blight the Black community. We are the largest city in a state that was the first in activating its trigger laws to ban abortion when Roe v. Wade was overturned, that leads the charge in discriminatory LGBT legislation and book bans, and is served by a senator who was an insurrectionist.

How can you live out there? was a common question from my friends back in Boston. A question that was no less alienating than the culture shock I experienced in the midwest because, for better or worse, Kansas City had become my home.

I recognized the Chiefs as a unifying presence, the common bond that brought together people of different generations and cultures and backgrounds. This was the city’s 3rd space. So, after 7 years of living in Kansas City—and for the first time in my life—I decided to become a sports fan and see what I might discover.

To read the full version of “On Art and Sports: Notes from the Kansas City Chiefs 2023 Season’” and access my library of short stories, craft notes, and e-books, join my story subscription program.