Chiefs, Dodgers aren't really villains

But teams that win around the clock generally upset people.

Roki Sasaki

Traumatic days are ahead for the NFL and Major League Baseball. Because the Chiefs are in the Super Bowl, the Internet tells us that the biggest game will be unanimously boycotted. Because the Dodgers have signed free agents Roki Sasaki, Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates, they have also driven baseball fans back home.

This could signify a major lifestyle change in America. Last year’s Super Bowl, which also featured the Chiefs, lured 123.7 million viewers. What will they all do next Sunday? Will they congest the golf courses, overpopulate the beaches? Will swap meets be overwhelmed? Will bars, restaurants and pizza delivery services go out of business? And whatever will they do with all those commercials?

There were 70.7 million customers at regular-season baseball games in 2024. Should they deprive themselves of that entertainment option in 2025, they might energize the bowling-alley industry. They could revitalize shopping malls. They could trigger an uptick in prime-time TV ratings. Who knows? They might even meet their next-door neighbors.

Now, it’s entirely possible that the Internet is not representative of American fandom as a whole, and that people will reluctantly tune in the Super Bowl despite the fact that Kansas City has won the last two and will now play in its fifth in six years. And once the birds begin singing, the enduring magnetism of baseball will take hold once more, and people will eat hot dogs, and take their ice cream out of little plastic helmets, and enjoy the national pastime even if the Dodgers are the ruling oligarchs.

No one expects fans to act or think rationally, and the web has given them the opportunity to voice their opinions to the world, instead of muttering to themselves in the driver’s seat. And obviously the Chiefs and Dodgers have their fans and defenders, often as irrational as their critics. But the main crimes committed by these franchises are hard to pinpoint. They didn’t beat trashcans in the dugout and they didn’t deflate footballs.

The Chiefs are being scorned because they seem to get the benefit of the doubt from the referees on a weekly basis. The latest “example” was the way their defense denied Buffalo’s Josh Allen a fourth-and-one conversion in Sunday’s AFC Championship Game. Now, it’s certainly valid to question why the NFL’s technology hasn’t figured out the proper spot in those situations, especially in an age when we are immediately told that Scottie Scheffler’s approach shot has come to a stop 14 feet and six inches from the cup. But the couch probably isn’t the best vantage point to second-guess that call.

The Dodgers have become villains because some of the best players of the game want to take their money and play for them. But baseball is not subject to a salary cap. Anyone in baseball could have conjured up the deferred-money scheme that was so appealing to Shohei Ohtani last year and allowed him to play for $2 million, which opened up the budget for the Dodgers to sign Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Sasaki isn’t eligible for the max money and the Dodgers persuaded him for $6.8 million this year.

The Dodgers don’t sign everybody they want. Juan Soto signed with the Mets. Going back a few years, Gerrit Cole signed with the Yankees and Bryce Harper with the Phillies. For that matter, Ohtani originally signed with the Angels and, if he had any reasonable expectation that they would ever win, might still be there.

So neither the Chiefs nor the Dodgers are America’s Team. Maybe nobody can be, these days. Instead of noting the historical excitement of the Chiefs possibly winning a third consecutive Super Bowl, when no one else has done so, there’s this outbreak of Chiefs Fatigue. The ubiquity of Travis Kelce, and the networks’ continuing fascination with Taylor Swift acting like a homecoming queen in her suite, can be tiresome for sure. But just what aspect of Patrick Mahomes makes you jaded? Here’s a guy who buys his offensive linemen Rolexes, Yeti coolers, air compression leg attachments, Lucchese leather boots, Oakley sunglasses, and other trinkets that reportedly came out to $25,000 a pop over the holidays. He also gathers all his receivers in Dallas every spring, puts them up and feeds them, and conducts pre-pre-pre- season passing workouts.

We ask our franchises to be well-managed, and the Chiefs traded up 17 spots in the 2017 draft to take Mahomes with the 10th overall pick. The ninth pick, by Cincinnati, was receiver John Ross, whose unprecedented 40-yard speed did him little good when the games started. The second pick, by Chicago, was quarterback Mitch Trubisky, who is now the backup in Buffalo. Again, a lot of teams could have jumped on Mahomes, who didn’t even attend the NFL draft because he thought he might be a third-round pick.

Nobody made the Eagles fire Andy Reid. They did, and the Chiefs hired him. Twenty other teams could have drafted cornerback Trent McDuffie in 2022. The Chiefs, who have had only one top ten pick since 2014 (Mahomes), did so, and then took George Karlaftis with the 30th pick, safety Bryan Cook with the 62nd, linebacker Leo Chenal with the 103rd, and Isiah Pacheco with the 251st. That’s five starters in one draft, one year after Kansas City snagged linebacker Nick Bolton with the 58th pick and center Creed Humphrey with the 63rd. That’s how you sustain winning in a league that does everything it can to make sure 16 teams finish 9-8 and 16 others finish 8-9.

What do the Chiefs have in common with Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, Brady’s New England Patriots and Curry’s Golden State Warriors? Everybody thought those champions got all the calls as well. Yes, there’s no question that the Chiefs got a good whistle against Houston in the playoffs and against Atlanta and Cincinnati, among others, during the season. But Allen was the beneficiary of seven roughing-the-passer calls in 2024, two more than Mahomes.

Those who claim to spot a conspiracy should ask themselves why the NFL would cater to the team in the 33rd media market in America. A truly omnipotent NFL probably would have arranged for the New York Giants to reach the playoffs more than twice in the past 14 years, or for the Giants and Jets to do better than 8-24 this year. Or, for that matter, it would have arranged a better fate for the Cowboys, who have hung onto their charisma even though they haven’t played in a conference championship game since they won the Super Bowl 29 years ago.

Great teams, and players, enhance their sports. They make the wins and losses more significant. They lend context. Buster Douglas isn’t an important figure in boxing because he knocked out a marginal fighter. He’s the one who upset Mike Tyson.

The PGA Tour’s TV ratings are mediocre at the moment because its top-ranked players have sat out most of the young season. Would anybody argue that Tiger Woods was bad for his game?

At last report the Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles plan to proceed to New Orleans over the weekend. The Dodgers still are scheduled to play Detroit in their first home game on March 27. I’ll be providing a book list shortly.