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Originally Posted by Discuss Thrower
What have Chiefs done to "reward" KC fans' loyalty?
I'm 26 and the Chiefs have had 15 winning seasons in that span. Only five of those seasons came since the year 2000 and a 3-11 record in the postseason.
And it's not like KC is the only fanbase that follows a mediocre team. Cleveland and Detroit are worse. The Jets have sucked outside of their defensive runs carrying Mark Sanchez. Jacksonville and Tennessee haven't done anything since 1999. Cincinnati is just a step higher than the Chiefs "success" wise. Miami and Buffalo get to be fisted by New England on regular occasions. Dallas is a perennial 8-8 team with the hype of Montana-era 9ers... Some of the same goes to the Bears. The Vikings would've been moved to LA had it not been for the Favre years and Adrian Peterson.
The NFL has been a Patriots / Packers / Steelers / Colts (Peyton Manning) / NFC East-flavor-of-the-week league for the better part of the decade. It looks to be transitioning to a 49ers / Seahawks / Panthers / Colts league owing to their young, marketable stars. It would be really no wonder if interest wanes because all of the other franchises not mentioned above aren't relevant nationwide or to the echo chambers that are ESPN and the NFL Network -especially when you figure out that a lot of these teams have outright sucked for the developmental years of the kids my age or younger: it leads to them being "bandwagon" fans loosely tied to a team that's probably not in their region or caring more on fantasy football.
But coming back to the Chiefs... They've been mediocre at best for almost two decades outside of a handful of seasons where they play exciting ball in the regular season only to get bounced in their first game of the playoffs. Depending on who you ask, they're still at the same competitive level as they were last season or they've actively gotten worse. And they're facing a tougher schedule alignment from drawing the NFC West and AFC East along with being in the awesome spot of being in the division with two other playoff teams last season who swept the Chiefs.
There's really no reason for a team to be overly excited about the team's prospects in the next two seasons when you factor in the age of the team's stars and the moves that haven't been made to get ready for their departure.
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Throw into the mix all the goofy things the NFL is doing to "protect the league" needed or made up (by a group of well-meaning lawyers who need to cover their butts), and the league is getting harder for true football fans to enjoy. There will be other who replace us, but overall the true "smash mouth" football fan is having their version of fun replaced with something else.
So while the Chiefs own their own level of fault in losing some of their loyal fan-base, in many ways the league isn't helping the larger cause. But alas, the Chiefs have a market that has around 80K football fans who have little other to do for those 8-10 days a year, and some cash to burn.