The Kansas City Collapse and the Vibe Shift

Mister President, a second vibe shift just hit the culture.

You wanna talk about sports? No?

Too bad. We’re talking about sports today.

Somewhat. Kind of. Not really. Look, just… if you have some prejudice against professional sports - I get it - but, let’s set our reservations aside for the moment and take a look at what took place in the Big Easy last night¹.

Since the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, became the 47th President of the United States (dethroning Grover Cleveland as the only president to boast the dubious honor of securing two non-consecutive terms), much ink has been spilled about the vibe shift.

His smile and optimism: gone.

On November 5th, 2024 - less than twenty-four hours after the long over-due calling of the elections - most Americans woke up feeling a bit… strange. Depending on what side of the ever-widening political divide you fall upon, that sensation was engendered for different reasons, but almost everyone could agree that there was a strange sense that something had just changed, profoundly and irrevocably so. It felt as if a tectonic shift had occurred not just in the political world, but the very fabric of the nation. In a grueling months-long prelude in which we were told, in no uncertain terms, from every angle, every talking head, and every major media outlet, that Kamala Harris would be the first Madame President. Whether you liked it or not. Not only was she going to be president - you were stupid if you doubted it. It was a foregone conclusion. There was no way, scientifically, mathematically, or even logically, that the knuckle-dragging, vicious racist-cum-convicted felon that was our former President going to reclaim the Oval Office.

And then he did.

And he didn’t just squeak out a narrow win, either.

It was a bonafide rout. Every swing state Trump could have won, he won. Almost every state, without exception - even those that ultimately went blue - had shifted to the right; for instance, despite the proclamations that Latino voters would finally manifest the mythical Democrat wet-dream of Blue Texas, when the dust had settled, we learned that New York, of all states, had shifted further to the right than Texas did to the left. To the shock of the Regime mouthpieces, many of the Latinos they were certain would fall in line and vote Democrat ended up flipping entire Hispanic-majority countries in Texas red. Not only that, but Donald Trump became the first Republican candidate to secure the popular vote since Bush Jr. in 2004 - another one of those things that we were told by the powers that be would never happen again.

It was made abundantly clear that the majority of the country had staunchly and unequivocally refused what they were told they had to accept.

I see a lot of similarities between the relentless, infuriatingly smug and self-assured pro-Harris media blitz and the lead up to Super Bowl 59. After securing their spot as the AFC champions and the confrence’s Super Bowl representatives for the third time in as many years, every sports-centric media outlet was telling the public that they were going to see the Kansas City Chiefs perform the first and likely only ever three-consecutive Super Bowl wins - the vaunted Three-Peat. Pat Mahomes was going to claim the spot of Greatest of All Time from Tom Brady and go down in history as the NFL’s equivalent of Superman, and the Chiefs would dethrone the New England Patriots as the most dominant dynasty in all of football history, and all other teams and fans would have to bend the knee and kiss Mahomes (soon to be) four glittering rings.

Better still for the Chiefs and all their newly minted fans - many of whom had leapt onto the KC bandwagon with steel-toed boots in the past season or two - their opponent would be the Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles, for those unfamiliar with the football landscape, are one of the more… polarizing teams in the league. Mostly because their fans are, to put it mildly, incendiary.

Lincoln Field, where the Eagles play, is the only NFL stadium equipped with on-site jail cells. Infer from that what you will.

Earlier in the season, Eagles fans once again made headlines after one of them made some rather unflattering remarks to a female Packers fan during the playoffs. Later, after securing the NFC championship and punching their ticket to the Super Bowl by defeating the upstart Washington Commanders in a home game, Washington fans were reportedly requesting police protection as they left the stadium for fear of being harangued by rabid Philly fans. Unfortunately for them, the Philadelphia police were too busy dancing with their fellow Eagles’ fans to be of much use.

Needless to say, the media had very little positive to say about the Eagles fans.

But, for the Chiefs, it would be light work to dispatch of the birds; the did so in 2022, so it only made sense that the Chiefs, who still boasted a roster largely identical to that year, would do so again. Besides - the Eagles quarterback, Jalen Hurts, was shaking off the rust from being benched for a concussion shortly before the play-offs. He was still working through beef with wide reciever AJ Brown, who appeared to be taking the addition of super-star running back Saquon Barkley as Hurts’ new best friend rather hard. Their embattled head coach, Nick Sirianni, was facing chants of FIRE NICK from Eagles’ fans at their home turf of Lincoln Field during the fifth game of the season. Sirianni met these jeers with all the grace and poise one would expect from a Philly coach.

He started screaming at them and taunting them back.

During the lead up to the game, Hurts, Barkley, and Sirianni were all confident that they were going to get revenge on the Chiefs for what happened in 2022, a game in which they felt they were robbed by some very questionable play-calling near the end of the game that allowed the Chiefs to edge them out with a field goal². Yet, their confidence was a quiet one. They didn’t feel the need to rebuke the media and their many, many vocal detractors. They kept a remarkably low profile.

Yet, if you listened to any major sports media outlet, you’d think that the outcome of Super Bowl 59 was so sure that they might as well just skip the formalities and hand Mahomes the Lombardi without even bothering to play the game. All of the hype was squarely on the Chiefs - Jalen Hurts, who is easily a Top Ten QB, was almost absent from the marketing, appearing only in flashes. If it shows you the level of disparity in how the two teams were treated by the media, just look at Fortnite, in which you could buy a Pat Mahomes skin that allowed you to live out your fantasies of watching Mahomes blast Peter Griffin’s head off with a double-barrel shotgun or run over Goku in a Maserati. One might think that Hurts would get a skin as well. If you wanted to rep your Brotherly Love for the city named after it, however, all you could get was a goggle-eyed, cartoon eagle skin.

Okay?

And how did this game shake out?

Pictured: Nick Sirianni and Jalen Hurts with the Lombardi Trophy.

Pictured: Pat Mahomes on the verge of tears as he watches the Three-Peat go up in smoke right before his eyes.

Pictured: The citizens of Philadelphia doing what they do best in the aftermath of the Eagles’ victory - anarchy.

The Philadelphia Eagles did not just beat the Kansas City Chiefs - they dismantled them.

Again, this outcome was unthinkable to anyone who genuinely bought into what the talking heads of the sports world was saying. The final score of 22 to 40 is misleading: the Chiefs only brought their score up into the double-digits during garbage time, long after the Eagles had secured the win when they no longer felt the need to apply pressure and instead simply let the clock drain, safe in the knowledge that the Chiefs just didn’t have enough time to come back. Which they didn’t.

For the majority of the night, Mahomes did not look like his usual self. He looked scared, even. Philly’s defense - inarguably the best in the league - had his number. The guy couldn’t breath without one of Philly’s D-line pouncing for his neck. He wasn’t just sacked six times, he was violently laid out more than once. I guarantee you he’s going to be having nightmares about Eagles linebacker Josh Sweat for years to come.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure the idea of being thrashed by a 6’5, 265 pound linebacker built like a semi-truck is terrifying to anyone.

It also must be mentioned that Mahomes threw two devestating interceptions, one of which was snagged out of the air by rookie Cooper Dejean and returned for a touchdown. This was the first pick-six in a Super Bowl game since 2017. Oh, and it was also Dejean’s birthday.

“Are you not entertained?”

There’s an argument to be made that the game was one of, if not the worst performance Mahomes has ever turned in. Hurts, on the other hand, deservedly got the MVP nod.

As for the rest of the Chiefs team, it’s hardly worth commenting on; you could say it looked as if they didn’t even show up to the game. As I said, by the time they did wake up and decide to play - or perhaps the Eagles allowed them to play - it was all over save for the crying. Which it looked like several Chiefs players were about to do.

If there will be any image that sticks with me from last night, it will be the shots from the Chief’s sidelines. The look of sheer dejection on their players faces was the kind of sad resignation of someone who just received a terminal cancer diagnosis. Travis Kelce in particular spent most of the game watching his team fall apart with a glassy-eyed, thousand-yard stare, not unlike the look of a private watching all of his boot-camp buddies being vaporized by Japanese machine guns on the beachhead of Okinawa.

And audience was eating. It. Up.

Though the mainstream sports media outlets seemed to be pathologicaly unable to keep from glazing the Chiefs in the prelude to the Big Game, the laity of the NFL were about up to their tits with the team. If you tapped into social media before or during the game, it became clear that the overwhelming majority of football fans did not want to see the Three-Peat happen. When it comes to smaller, independent sports-centric personalities on YouTube and other sites, even die-hard Philly haters were admitting that they’d rather see the Birds win than a Three-Peat³. Even in the smoke-choked watering hole I usually watch sports in, where the crowd had been anti-Eagles for most of the season, pretty much everyone was hollering in their favor as they tore through Kansas City, play by play. One regular even told me, Enjoy this, because you’re never gonna hear me say Go Birds again.

The thing is that, if you aren’t a Kansas City fan, you’re most likely sick to death of the Chiefs. Many profess hatred for the team. And many of those people - like myself - don’t want to hate the Chiefs.

Personally, I like their head coach, the walking, talking walrus and Jamie Hyneman’s older, larger, long-lost brother, Andy Reid. He was the coach of the Eagles for most of my younger years, so I have a soft-spot for him for that reason alone, but, for a long time, he was also the coach with the most wins who also had no Super Bowl wins. When he brought Kansas City to their first Super Bowl, I was happy for him.

Pat Mahomes, too, seems like a decent guy. I don’t want to dislike him. Hell, I don’t dislike him. I have no quarrel with Pat Mahomes.

It’s almost too perfect that Taylor Swift is dating the Chiefs’ tight, Travis Kelce, because I and many others have the exact same problem with her.

I did not want to dislike Taylor Swift. Believe it or not, I don’t want to hate anyone. I wanted more than anything to extend some grace to Miss Swift and simply remain agnostic on her.

But it feels as if the Entertainment-Industrial Complex would simply not allow anyone to be apathetic to Taylor Swift. You were going to see her, and you were going to like her, whether you wanted to or not. Two years ago, when Swift started dating Kelce, you could not escape her. I remember watching games in which the Chiefs were not playing, and the sports media would still be showing Taylor Swift at the Chiefs game from that day, or just talking about her. It got so bad I found myself wondering, Am I watching a football game or a Taylor Swift documentary?

It only made sense that the biggest pop star in the world, who happened to be dating one of the best tight ends in football, playing for the most dominant team in the league, were going to make headlines. But, three years on, it’s almost laughable to pretend as if anyone besides Swifties or Kansas City stans still cares. Yet, the NFL, eager to capitalize on Swift’s popularity, refuse to let her quietly sit in the background where she belongs while her boyfriend plays on the field.

The same thing could be said for Reid and Mahomes. Like I said, I like them both. Now, I don’t particularly like third member of the Chiefs’ uber-triumverate. Kelce has always struck me as a braggadocious, conceited, lumbering ogre of a man. During the last Super Bowl, he had the audacity to push Andy Reid while having a temper tantrum on the side line.

I suppose the fact that they won that game made Reid willing to let that water go beneath the metaphorical bridge, but it was an ugly display that should have netted Kelce some sort of disciplinary action.

But the media has also made it very difficult to be lukewarm about Reid and Mahomes when, for the past calendar year, they’ve been in almost every other commercial on television (and YouTube). Their questionable acting chops have been heavily relied upon by serial psychic terrorists at the insurance outfit State Farm’s advertising department, which are second only to Liberty Mutual’s commercials for the undisputed and dubious honor of airing the worst ads for anything ever.

Pretty much every time I saw Reid watching with slack-jawed disbelief as Mahomes was sacked, I could hear him crowing Bundlerooski - a line from this miserably over-played ad, which is about as funny as a septic infection.

I think this line from Brian Phillips at The Ringer from his article, The Malicious Joy of Watching the Kansas City Chiefs Crumble, says it better than I can:

Every time I hear Andy Reid say “bundlerooski” I want to boycott every product the Chiefs advertise. Only I can’t, because they advertise everything, and I would be rendered incapable of participating in the economy and forced to live in a cave, which would at least have the pleasant side effect of keeping me from having to hear so much about the Chiefs.

Travis Kelce, too, has been dancing like a trained chimp for any company willing to float him a big enough paycheck. Along with being inescapable in both the media and advertisement, he and his brother Jason’s podcast, New Heights, has been shilled to high hell on every platform that hosts it. If it tells you just how big the push is to make the entire Kelce clan the next big thing is, Jason Kelce’s wife started her own podcast that, upon debut, eclipsed The Joe Rogan Experience in listenership for a brief moment. I’m sure it was totally organic and natural that the first episode of a podcast hosted by the wife of a retired football player who’s name was virtually unknown before just so happened to overtake the biggest podcast on the planet.

This is all to say that the Chiefs have been so woefully over-exposed and shoved down the throats of not just football fans, but the American public, that it turned a lot of people into Eagles fans - if only for a night.

What’s truly amazing is that the only people who are stunned by the Chief’s on-field collapse is… well, okay, it’s just about everyone because, yeah, I thought Philly would win⁴, but I thought the Chiefs would turn in a better performance than what they did. But anyone who’s name was Tony Romo, Tom Brady, Terry Bradshaw, or any other color commentator or sports pundit knew that the Eagles had a better chance at snatching away the Lombardi from the Chiefs than the mainstream sports media wanted to admit.

For those who don’t follow sports, you might not know that, despite going to the Super Bowl, the Kansas City Chiefs’ 2024 season was not the greatest. Despite an enviable record of fifteen wins and two losses⁵, and being unbeaten for most of the season, they did not play like a team that should have those numbers. For instance, on Black Friday, they barely managed to scrape by the Las Vegas Raiders - a team that their own head coach, Antonio Pierce, infamously called the worst fucking team in the football during a presser. I distinctly remember seeing a tweet from a Raider’s fan saying, The Chiefs must be God’s favorite football team.

Many of the Chiefs’ victories came from last-minute field goals, happy accidents, and, more than anything, questionable calls from the referees. It seemed as if an officiating call from a referee could go in the Chiefs’ favor, it always, without fail, would. The problem became so prevalent that many football fans were certain the games were fixed in the Chiefs favor to ensure they got the Three-Peat. Accusations reached a fever pitch during the post-season, when extremely suspect play-calling from the refs put the Chiefs’ over both the Houston Texans and the Buffalo Bills, leading many fans to call the National Football League the fakest sport in the world.

The shock of this team’s on-field collapse, of course, also comes from the fact that many were acting as if the Eagles had a banner season themselves; their record was 14-3, only one notch below the Chiefs. It was clear to anyone who’d watched their playoff games that the Eagles of 2024 were not the Eagles of 2022. The general manager, Howie Roseman, might just have secured his position in the football Hall of Fame by retooling the team into a genuine powerhouse since their last Super Bowl appearance, and in just two years, at that. Hiring Saquon Barkley - quite possibly one of the best running backs of all time - was a game changer that altered the odds significantly. His acquisition will most likely go down as one of if not the single most impactful free agent signing in the league’s history. The team’s great D-line was supercharged with robust young talent, upgrading it from remarkable to the best in the league. Veterans offensive players like Hurts and Brown were still performing at all-star levels and squashed whatever beef had dogged them earlier in the season. Hell, after the rocky start to the season and the taunting incident at Lincoln Field, Nick Sirianni returned the following week with a shaved head.

I assume he had a Britney Spears-esque meltdown and shaved his head in a fit of inchoate rage.

Nobody really knows why, but I guess it must have unlocked up his crown chakra or something because the Eagles proceeded to win every game they played for the remainder of the year (up to and now including the Super Bowl), which everyone in the media seemed to forget.

The 2024 Chiefs were a very beatable team. The revamped Eagles team looked very different than they did during their last showdown. Yet, every advantage the Eagles had was dismissed, and every chink in the Chiefs’ armor was willfully overlooked. The worst part for the Chiefs, though? They bought into their own hype. I have no doubt the teary-eyed looks on Mahomes and Kelce’s faces were in part because they had really convinced themselves that they were about to stomp all over Philadelphia and go down in history as the only team to ever pull off a Three-Peat.

Huh.

So, you have an egregiously over-exposed team, backed unilaterally by the mainstream media, that everyone with an ounce of honesty knows is standing on an unstable foundation of stand, going up against a supposedly historically unpopular opponent, one who’s playing a much different game than they were during their last go-around, one who they defeated before and is hungry for revenge, one who’s fans and supporters are considered backwards, unwashed, and borderline retarded barbarians, only for the candidate - sorry, team who we were all assured would soundly trounce the other to be blown into the stratosphere in perhaps a generationally embarrassing drubbing.

Why does that sound so familiar?

Pic unrelated?

Ultimately, the vibe shift slowly roiling through the wider American public manifested at the Super Bowl as a full-throated refutation of the Chiefs. Listening to the noise generated by the crowd at the Superdome, you would have thought you were watching an Eagles’ home game. Fly Eagles Fly, the team’s rather dopey fight song, could be heard from the stands every time Jalen Hurts blinked. When Dejean pulled off his Birthday Pick-Six, the roar was near deafening.

The same titanic applause could be heard when, during the National Anthem, Donald Trump was shown on the field’s jumbo-tron saluting the flag from where he was watching the game with his daughter and grandson.

Conversely, the reply from the crowd was no softer when Taylor Swift was shown on the jumbo-tron in the waning minutes of the second quarter, clenching the railing with grit teeth as she watched her lug of a boyfriend blow a historic opportunity in spectacular fashion⁶.

The only difference is that while the crowd applauded Trump, Swift’s appearance was roundly met with unambiguous booing.

The expression on her face says everything.

If I really wanted to stretch it, I think there’s even an argument to be made that Kendrick Lamar’s half-time show performance is somewhat within the boundaries of the vibe-shift. Much in the same way the Eagles have claimed the scalp of another dynasty with the Chiefs⁷, Lamar effectively spent 2024 dismantling the long-time golden child of the mainstream music industry, Drake. There was a time where Drake was untouchable. Arguably the most successful artist working in the industry, adored by millions, and fueled by the unadulterated support of the industry.

And then he got caught being a little too friendly with a then-fourteen year old Millie Bobbie Brown.

Brown has always insisted Drake never acted untowards around her. But it did raise eye-brows. And it did draw attention to Drake’s long history of being a little too chummy with suspiciously young girls. And the history of some of his associates.

Days before his performance at the Super Bowl, Kendrick Lamar collected a cool five Grammy awards - most of them for his blockbuster track, Not Like Us.

If you’re unfamiliar with the song, the song is perhaps the most scathing diss track in rap history, in which he calls Drake… well, here are some choice bars that will get the point across.

Say, Drake, I hear you like 'em young,
You better not ever go to cell block one.

Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophiles.

And, my personal favorite:

Why you trollin' like a bitch? Ain't you tired?
Tryna strike a chord and it's probably A minor.

There’s a reason this song struck a chord with the public. People are tired of Drake strutting around like a gassed-up peacock despite never having made a good song in his life⁸, abusing his wealth and power and influence. People are also very tired of people like him using their position to be creeps with underage girls. People wanted to see Drake humbled. A lot of those people don’t like Kendrick Lamar. But they were happy to throw their weight behind him when he was the guy who did it.

And, I must digress for a second that I just… cannot fucking imagine how it must feel for Drake to pick a fight with Kendrick Lamar and have this guy not just come out and just call you a fucking pedophile in a song, but for that song to become the single most successful song of 2024 and snag five Grammys for it. Personally, if I was Drake, I’d have gone and taken a long walk off a short pier if the entire god damn Superdome was screaming A MINOOOOOOOOR on the most watched television program of the year.

Also, Lamar had Samuel L. Jackson dressed like Uncle Sam on stage. Why? I don’t know. But I thought it was kind of funny, especially because I was like - Wait. Is that who I think it is?

I still have no idea what this was about, by the way, so don’t ask.

Whether it be the Taylor Swift, Drake, the Kansas City Chiefs, or a certain giggly, erstwhile vice-president, it is becoming unambiguously clear that the American public has reached their limit with being told who to like, what to listen to, and what to do by what Curtis Yarvin so infamously calls The Cathedral. On the turf of the Superdome, on the charts, in the ballot box - these figures, propped up by the staunch support of an increasingly ineffective media apparatus, are being refuted by the American public.

I understand why people don’t like football. It is, ultimately, the premier example of modern day panem et circenses for the American empire that a lot of people take far too seriously (though, I’d also say that much of American politics is effectively kabuki theater, at this point, as well). But, in many ways, the gridiron football field, so uniquely American as it is, is a reflection of the nation as a whole.

As above.

So below.

1. As of this writing, of course.

2. I agree with this, by the way.

3. These were also the only people talking about sports in a professional capacity who were even willing to admit that Philadelphia had a sporting chance, it seemed.

4. As a professed Eagles fan, perhaps I was biased.

5. Both of these losses came from games in which Mahomes was benched, which should really tell you about the rest of the team’s caliber.

6. To be fair, Kelce is a high caliber tight end, but his performance was every bit as dismal as the rest of his team’s.

7. When the Eagles won the Super Bowl in 2018 against Tom Brady’s Patriots, they thwarted what could have been another Three-Peat.

8. I stand by this statement. Drake is one of the least talented people to ever make it as big as he has.