Football town? Baseball town? In Kansas City, the debate rages on
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Some places, many places, the word association games are short and sweet.
St. Louis.
"Baseball capital of the world."
Dallas.
"Cowboys."
Detroit.
"Hockey. Gordie Howe. That giant fist."
Columbus.
"Buckeye Saturdays in autumn."
Los Angeles.
"Pro hoops. Showtime. Kobe. Lob City."
Kansas City.
"Umm ..."
Kansas City.
"Well ..."
Kansas City.
"Paul Rudd."
You're cheating.
"Fine. Brisket."
Kansas City.
"The NFL is the top sport (in the country), and Kansas City Chiefs fans back their team as well as anyone," says Stan Weber, the longtime Kansas State radio and television analyst. "So you've got to start with, 'It's a football town.'"
Kansas City.
"I tell people this is a baseball town," says Bill Hancock, executive director of the College Football Playoff, "and they look at me like I'm crazy."
Kansas City.
"That's a good question, it really is," says Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. "Because I think a lot of people associate it as a college (sports) town."
And there you go. Ask three different locals, three very smart, very insightful people, walk away with three different answers.
Oh, and it's a good problem, to be sure. Opening Day for the Royals beckons on Monday, the unofficial start of spring and the launch of the S.S. Eternal Hope. Celebrating the spoils of the 2014 American League championship, our Blue October, is the first order of business.
It also complicates -- again, in a good way -- the premise, the question, the word association game noted above. Game 1 of the World Series between the Royals and Giants registered a 48.2 rating in Kansas City last fall, the highest for any World Series game in any single market since 2007 and higher than any Chiefs game had drawn, eyeballs-wise, up to that point. No baseball season in this burg has been this hotly anticipated since 1986, the one that followed the last Royals run to a Fall Classic.
So the debate rolls on, more friendly than hostile. Some natives lovingly but objectively think of Kansas City as a fair-weather town, a sports city that throws its love and attention and passions behind its biggest winner of the moment. Conventional wisdom is that the metro saw itself as a baseball hotbed until the Chiefs showed up and got good (which was immediately). The Hank Stram era started to fade, and the expansion Royals turned up and got good even quicker than the Chiefs did, taking the baton for more than a decade before Marty Schottenheimer and the Red Sea snatched it back in the early '90s.
The Chiefs and Royals had rarely been strong at the same time, but the times, they are a-changin': In 2014, Kansas City's two oldest pro franchises appeared in postseason games during the same calendar year for the first time ever. The Royals return most of the Cinderella roster that charmed America and entranced a populace. The Chiefs are coming off back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since 2005-06 and boast stability at coach and quarterback for the first time since Dick Vermeil and Trent Green shared the cockpit.
"There is no wrong answer," Kendrick chuckles.
But what's the right one? Is there a right one?
THE CASE FOR FOOTBALL
The parking lots. Oh, those parking lots. Some historians peg the first tailgaters as wealthy elite and Congressmen who brought picnic baskets full of food with them to watch, from a distance, the Battle of Bull Run in 1861. (The Confederates, shall we say, upset the Union troops that day, reportedly sending those tailgaters scurrying back to Washington in a panic.) So, no, we didn't invent it, but it has been perfected and fermented here, a quilt of charcoal smoke, wheat beer and portable generators as far as the eye can see.
Over the last 15 years, the Chiefs haven't always been great -- over the last eight, in fact, they won four games or less in a season four different times -- and the franchise still hasn't won a playoff game since January 1994. And yet Arrowhead Stadium, more often than not, has remained one of the top 10 atmospheres, top 10 must-visits, on any self-respecting NFL bucket list.
LET’S GO, CHIEFS: Check out these photos of fans and the excitement around Chiefs football.
"I think the Chiefs have an advantage," says Weber, the former Wildcat quarterback who has called Kansas City home since 1985. "Because there are a lot of NFL fans, and you can't be a big sports fan without engaging in the NFL."
Pro football -- the ratings, the popularity, the money, the cultural resonance -- beats the living pants off of every other organized American sporting league, across the board. So there's that. With a few exceptions -- St. Louis being key among them -- any city with an NFL team tends to think of itself as a pro football city first.
"The Chiefs certainly come to mind because they probably had a more long-standing winning tradition (lately)," Kendrick says, "in comparison to the 29-year (postseason drought) that we had in baseball.
"Even those years with Vermeil, you look at some of those years -- they weren't great, but they were exciting. Of course, the Schottenheimer era before that, where they were consistently good and really had Super Bowl-quality teams and just couldn't get over the hump ... I think a lot of people, they associate that, I think, with Kansas City."
And when times are good here, they're very, very, very good. The Chiefs played to 98.1 percent capacity crowds at Arrowhead in 2014 and 98.2 percent capacity the year before that. Team broadcasts drew a 36.1 average rating this past fall, the seventh-highest number among NFL markets behind the Packers, Saints, Seahawks, Broncos, Steelers and Bills.
Kansas City's television numbers are up 8.4 percent over 2011 but were also down 15.8 percent off of 2013's 42.9 average rating. That was the third-largest drop of any NFL market behind the Saints (minus 17.7) and Titans (minus 17.1).
So is it a football-crazy town, or just another town in a football-crazy country?
"I'll just say football, for the last 20 years," Weber says. With a caveat. "Before last October, it was an easy answer."
Now, though? Now, not so much.
THE CASE FOR BASEBALL
Hancock moved here as a staffer with the old Big Eight Conference in 1978, at a time when the Chiefs were flailing and the Royals, the George Brett era, were starting their apex.
"Baseball is -- I don't know, it's like the big house on the corner, that two-story house that we all drove by all the time, but kind of remembered it was there and we didn't pay attention to it," Hancock says. "And somebody mowed the lawn and trimmed the shrubs and now we can be proud of it again."
LET’S GO, ROYALS: Check out these photos of fans and the excitement around Royals baseball.
When the Royals reached the postseason last fall for the first time since 1985, it was as if a city had rediscovered an old, torrid love again. The Kansas City Monarchs were to the Negro Leagues what the contemporaneous Yankees were on the Junior Circuit, the bar and benchmark. The Bronx Bombers' top farm team, the Kansas City Blues, won American Association titles here in 1952 and '53. From 1976-85, the Royals played in the postseason seven times.
"I think this is still a baseball town, the tradition was so rich," Kendrick notes. "We needed a team to rally behind, and they gave us one last year, and saw the fever that came along with winning baseball in Kansas City.... It was as exciting a time as I can remember following Kansas City sports."
Blue Fever had been building, steadily in recent summers, a sleeping giant finally extending to full stretch. The ratings for Royals broadcasts on FOX Sports Kansas City ranked fourth in 2014 among all MLB regional sports network packages, up from sixth in 2013, 15th in 2012 and 18th in 2011.
"Baseball and barbecue and the American Royal," Hancock notes. "I think you can't change your DNA. I don't know why anybody wants to.
"I think most people would say 'football (town).' And I get it. I'm 64 years old, so perhaps I have a different perspective than a 40-year-old.... There was baseball here before football was even a gleam in their daddy's eye.
"You talk to 10 people and nine of them will tell you that I'm nuts."
THE CASE FOR COLLEGE HOOPS
As the former home to the NCAA, Kansas City has still hosted more men's basketball Final Fours to date -- nine -- than any other US city. The Big 12 tournament has called downtown home 14 times, including 2010 to present.
"I think it's a hoops town in the fact that it has such great tradition playing in the NCAA and NAIA tournaments here," Weber says, "so there's a civic pride about being a basketball town, about supporting basketball."
How have Kansas City's sports viewing habits ranked relative to other television markets in the 2014-15 seasons?
MLB: No. 4 among all regional sports networks*
NFL: No. 7 among NFL local markets*
NCAA Men's Basketball: No. 4 for ESPN telecasts**
NCAA Football: No. 27 for ESPN telecasts**
NASCAR: No. 27 for Sprint Cup races on FOX***
*Source: SportsBusiness Journal
**Source: ESPN Communications
***Source: FOX Sports Communications
While the Royals and Chiefs unite us, collegiate passions run hot -- and divisive. Legions of Kansas Jayhawks and Missouri Tigers stand across from one another on either side of the rolling river, arms folded in silence. Kansas State faithful demand equal time. On any given fall or winter Saturday, you'll find pockets of Nebraska fans, Iowa fans, Iowa State fans, Wichita State fans, Missouri-Kansas City fans or Missouri State fans, baring their souls and lungs.
"And the NAIA (national tourney), it's still the truest basketball tournament to date, bar none," Kendrick says. "And I think all those things have given Kansas City a presence in the collegiate basketball world."
A strong one, too: Kansas City ranked fourth nationally (2.4) among college basketball markets for ESPN games tracked in 2014-15 by the network, behind Louisville (5.9), Greensboro, N.C. (3.0) and Raleigh-Durham (2.7). The City of Fountains tied with Carolina's "Triangle" region for second in 2013-14.
"It's almost kind of a hybrid sports town," Kendrick says. "We're a little bit of everything."
THE CASE FOR NONE OF THE ABOVE
To wit: Go west and southwest, and The Beautiful Game rules. Sporting Park puts the "art" in state of the art, a jewel along the metro's Kansas border and one of the premier outdoor facilities of its kind on the continent.
Sporting Kansas City's surge to Major League Soccer's elite has served as a springboard for soccer in the community: U.S. Soccer is developing a $75 million national training center in Kansas City, Kan., not far from the Legends shopping district that Sporting calls home. Sprint Cup races on FOX in 2015 have drawn a 6.1 rating, 27th among 56 markets tracked -- that's up 7 percent from last year's races through early April, and 13 percent better than the national average of 5.4.
"What I think is exciting in Kansas City is how collaborative everyone is," says Kathy Nelson, president and CEO of the Kansas City Sports Commission. "When we went to work on that (2016) Copa America bid, we had to have the Chiefs and Sporting as equal partners.... I think that sets us apart from what I'm (hearing) out in other communities."
Point of contrast: A friend in another prominent Midwest sports commission recently groaned to Nelson about how some of the pro teams don't call them back, or ponder, openly, what's in it for them.
"Here, that's not the case at all," she says. "It's just such a nice environment and everyone's saying, 'Well, what can we do to help?' I'm learning from other cities that they don't always have that open communication."
Game on, then.
Kansas City.
"The Royals' World Series run, that helps put you on the map," Nelson says. "And when the crowd at Arrowhead helps the Chiefs break the sound (record) in football, that helps put you on the map."
Kansas City.
"We've gone with the theme," Nelson says, "that we're a city of champions."
Monday afternoon, when that pennant gets hoisted to the sky, nary a soul will argue the point.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter at @SeanKeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com.
