Just curious, because around Kansas City you’d think it was the freakin’ Super Bowl. Every day for the last two weeks the sports page has had at least one page, sometimes more, devoted to some aspect of the upcoming game. It probably didn’t help that Kansas City had the week off last week, so there wasn’t coverage of another game to help fill in the gap. At least one TV station has had a couple of sportscasters stationed outside the stadium this evening blathering about the game.
It’s nice that Kansas City has a decent team this year after so many years of mediocrity. But this non-stop pre-game hype is really getting ridiculous. So what’s the coverage like in Denver? What about other cities? Is this just another game on the schedule or is it a really big deal?
I don’t usually watch much of the pre-game activities so I can’t tell you how much publicity it’s getting. But I’m looking forward to this game. I think everyone is expecting it to be a major game.
Undefeated team vs the team many consider the front runner for Superbowl winner? Hell yeah, it’s gonna get hyped. The NFL even changed the game time to get more air coverage.
The Chiefs/Broncos hype hasn’t penetrated to NE Ohio. We’re much more concerned with the Bengals/Browns AFC north battle and the Ohio State Buckeyes most likely being locked out of the BCS title game despite being unbeaten. Parochial concerns, to be sure but the Chiefs and Broncos are not on the radar.
I’m in Colorado and to be honest it isn’t that big of a deal. The Indianapolis game and the NY Giants game were much more hyped. The general feeling is that the KC Chiefs are a mirage, a product of an incredibly weak schedule and a bunch of narrow wins. Vegas confirms it as the Broncos are favored by more than a touchdown.
I was listening to a sports talk station coming home yesterday, and they had a talk show host from KC on and he was just furious about a column a Denver Post writer had produced that morning. I read the column when I got home and it was just a normal column that gently poked fun at KC’s schedule and how soft it was. The KC guy was just beside himself that the Chiefs were being disrespected. The Colorado guys were highly amused at how seriously this KC guy was taking it. Those kind of columns are written every week in every NFL town.
So to answer your question, it seems that the game is way bigger in the KC market than it is in the Denver market.
Which is as it should be. KC sucked last year. The team was a giant collection of failure in so many ways, from the management to the coaching to the Belcher incident. Now, suddenly, they’re winning in a way that nobody expected.
Contrast that with Denver where last year’s playoff upset is seen as an unhappy aberration (which it was, all dude had to do was tackle the receiver after getting torched and take the penalty and they’re in the Super Bowl) and success is expected.
Chiefs fans have every right to be excited about what’s going on. Soft schedule? Yeah, but that’s what happens when you were horrible the year before. Lucky wins? You make your own luck. Now they’re finally playing meaningful games against powerhouse teams? It’s been years since that happened.
I’ve been visiting Florida and South Carolina the past week. I’ve been at a sports bar every night. This game is very far off the radar in my experiences here. College sports have dominated the discussions and all of the sports talk radio.
Nobody cares in DC. I think pretty much everyone outside KC doesn’t put any stock in them being undefeated because they think it’s a fluke. So, no reason to hype it.