Confessions of a Reluctant Chiefs’ Fan

“Super Bowl Idolatry” is the title of a blog article I posted in January 2015, and I stand by what I wrote in that posting that has been viewed more than 1,650 times. But I must confess, I watched the Super Bowl this year for the first time in many, many years. Quite reluctantly, I am a Chiefs' fan. 

Cheers for the Chiefs!

There is hardly anyone of my Thinking Friends in this country, or even in Asia, I assume, who doesn’t know that the Kansas City Chiefs won an exciting come-from-behind victory in Super Bowl LIV on Sunday evening, Feb. 2. 

Since June and I have lived in the Kansas City metropolitan area for 14½ years now, I confess that we got caught up in the hype and even June, who never watches football games, watched the game with me along with our daughter Kathy and her husband Tim. We had a fun Super Bowl party of four.

I also must confess that at halftime, with the score tied and the momentum clearly on the side of the San Francisco 49ers, I predicted that the Chiefs were going to lose. June said I shouldn’t be so pessimistic--and she was right.

Who would have thought that the Chiefs would score more points in the 4th quarter than the 49ers did in the whole game! I had underrated “Mahomes’s magic.” 

One reason why it is easy to be a Chiefs fan now is because of Patrick Mahomes, the young quarterback who has had an amazing beginning to his career as an NFL quarterback.

Mahomes (b. 1995) seems like such a fine, personable young man, it’s hard not to be a fan of a team that has a quarterback like him.

Jeers for the Chiefs

While I have various negative feelings about football in general and professional football in particular, and while I have even more negative feelings about what I have called the idolatry surrounding the Super Bowl, the rest of this article is about the problematic name of the Kansas City team--as well as the name of their Super Bowl opponent.

The Chiefs’ name is a problem because there are Native Americans, and their sympathizers, who think that the name is racist. I realize that there are Native Americans that have no problem with the Chiefs’ name--or with the name of the 49ers or even the Washington Redskins. But some/many do.

Cyberspace brought to my attention several articles highlighting the problem. I read, and recommend, this 1/27 article in The Washington Post, this 1/29 article in The New York Times, and especially this 2/1 NBCnews.com article by Simon Moya-Smith, a Native American.

The two articles I was most influenced by, though, were this 2/1 Vox.com article and this article from a website I hadn’t previously heard of. The former was written by Rhonda LeValdo, an Acoma Pueblo woman who teaches at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. Her article begins, “The Kansas City Chiefs’ chant isn’t a tribute to people like me. It’s racist.”

The latter article by Zach Johnston in Uproxx.com is titled “Why Both Super Bowl Team Names Should be Replaced.” He forcefully points out the racism ensconced in both names, Chiefs and 49ers. (If you read just one of the linked-to articles, I suggest this one.)

The adult Sunday School class I am currently attending is discussing the Doctrine of Discovery. In our discussion on Super Bowl Sunday, I suggested that perhaps next year we might want to plan for some consciousness-raising about the Chiefs’ name, especially if they are in the Super Bowl again (which is a distinct possibility).

Maybe the time has come for more of us to be at least as concerned with the fair treatment of Native Americans as with watching/enjoying a football game.

On Not Watching the Super Bowl or (Much of) the Olympics

While I have no desire to put a damper anyone’s enjoyment of today’s Super Bowl or this month’s Olympic Games, let me share with you some reasons why I won’t be watching the Super Bowl or much of the Olympics.

What’s Wrong with the Super Bowl?

In January 2015, I posted an article titled “Super Bowl Idolatry.” I don’t need to repeat what I wrote then, although I would be happy for you to read (or re-read) that here. I still think about the same as I did three years ago—although now I am having serious thoughts about not watching any NFL games next season. 

One major reason for giving up watching football is the “violence” that is part of the game. In the first half of their last game of the season, it was painful to see Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs’ star tight end, get up wobbly and helped off the field after a hard hit caused his second concussion in three months.

So, in addition to my objection to the over-hyped, over-commercialized, “idolatrous” nature of the Super Bowl, also because of the violent nature of the game that injuries skillful athletes such as Kelce, who is just one of many, I will not be watching again this year.

What’s Wrong with the Olympics?

But what's wrong with the Olympics, whose participants are amateurs rather than over-paid professionals? Well, I’ve written some about that before, too, and I invite you to read “Questioning the Olympics,” the article I posted (here) on Feb. 15, 2010.

Added to the misgivings I had then, there is now the sordid story of the sexual abuse of U.S. Olympic female gymnasts by the team physician. More than 150 women accused the doctor of sexual abuse, but he was not sentenced until this year although charges against him go back to 1997.

And then there is the Tonya Harding story. I haven’t seen the new movie about her, but I do remember the sordid events involving her prior to the 1994 Winter Olympics. It seems that she was psychologically abused by her mother, partly to get her into the Olympics.

The pressure on (especially?) girls to get into the Olympics and to win a medal is so strong that psychological abuse is largely overlooked, and even the response to sexual abuse has been shamefully slow.

Isn’t North Korea’s Participation Good?

One of the noteworthy aspects of this month’s Olympic Games is the participation of North Korea. For athletes from both North and South Korea to march in together under one flag and for the Korean women’s ice hockey team to have players from both countries is remarkable and perhaps a sign of hope. But maybe not.

I would like to be as positive about this as the college student who wrote “The Olympic Truce: Giving peace a chance,” a Jan. 31 piece posted on the website of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Sadly, I think that North Korea’s “Olympics rapprochement” is likely to be a “global scam,” as explained in this Jan. 24 article on The American Conservative website.

As you regular readers know, I don’t usually cite TAC (or agree with most of their articles), but I’m afraid the author may be right in this case: Kim’s action is likely “a ruse . . . designed to give North Korea more time to get to the only thing it really does want: a nuclear weapon.”

So, sadly, these are some of the reasons I won’t be watching the Super Bowl today or (much of) the Olympics this month. 

Super Bowl Idolatry

Like many Americans, I enjoy a good football game. While not particularly a professional football fan, I do follow the Kansas City Chiefs. (As many of you know, the Chiefs played in the very first Super Bowl, which was on Jan. 15, 1967.) I watched at least some of almost all the Chiefs games in their rather mediocre 2014 season.

Next Sunday I am going to be preaching for the first time in many months, so I am looking forward to doing that. As one of the lectionary Scripture passages is from 1 Corinthians 8, I decided to preach about idolatry, past and present.

Upon realizing that February 1 is Super Bowl Sunday, I began to reflect upon the idolatrous characteristics of the Super Bowl. In searching the Internet, I found that I am not the first to have such thoughts.

Thus, I may not watch any of the Super Bowl—mainly because with all of the hype it seems to border on being idolatrous.

New USAmerican "Golden Calf"?

Consider the cost of attending the Super Bowl. Five days ago I checked to see what it would cost to purchase a ticket. The most expensive one, and there was only one at this price, was $115,000!

Most were much cheaper: I found 64 tickets priced from $10,000 to $13,500. The cheapest tickets, and there were 226 of them left, were $2,491.35. That is the price for just one football game! And even the parking costs more than $100.

In addition, millions are spent for the television advertisements: it is reported that a 30-second TV ad during the Super Bowl costs $4,500,000—not to mention the cost of making the ads.

In addition to those exorbitant prices, the football “idols” make outlandish salaries. For this past season, the top twenty players in the NFL made salaries of from $14,000,000 to $22,000,000. Some made more than $1,000,000 a game!

Tom Brady, the quarterback for the New England Patriots who will be playing in the Super Bowl, isn’t even in the top 20. But he, and others, makes a great sum of money from endorsements.

Of course, there are other idolatrous segments of American society, such as is seen in the world of entertainment and advertisement. For example, Tom Brady’s wife is Gisele Bundchen, a model.

According to this August 2014 article on Forbes.com, since 2002 Gisele has made more money than any other model in the world. “At 34, she is still sitting pretty at the top of the world’s highest-paid models list, pulling in an estimated $47 million before taxes and fees in the last 12 months.”

The article goes on to say, “Bundchen also made about $16 million more than quarterback husband Tom Brady’s $31.3 million annual paycheck.”

Actually, Super Bowl is just one part of the extensive hedonistic idolatry of this country with such excessive emphasis placed on pleasure and consumption, spurred on by millionaire models and multi-million-dollar Super Bowl ads.

In a Jan. 22 online article in Christianity Today, Kutter Callaway of Fuller Theological Seminary says, “The NFL is, in a real sense, our civic religion. It has Sunday worship services, mid-week Thursday celebrations, patron saints (Hall of Famers), and a liturgical calendar that begins with the NFL draft (in April) and ends with the Super Bowl (in February).”

But rather than confronting Super Bowl idolatry, many churches buy into the hype and have watch parties and other activities embracing it. Pastors.com even suggests making Super Bowl day “Football Sunday.”

There is a legitimate place for athletic contests, even championship football games. But let’s not make an idol of them!