Victor Penney:
Interim writer Victor Penney, Sporting Life
I find myself in a rather uncomfortable position with the NFL playoffs kicking off this month.
I’m doing the unthinkable: falling in love with another team, and it hurts.
As a longtime fan of the Dallas Cowboys, it pains me to say this, but they’ve been a trainwreck this season, and my wandering eye has landed on the Kansas City Chiefs. The reasons for Dallas’ failures are legion, but it’s not even the losing that bothers me, because I’ve had plenty of experience with that as a Toronto sports fan.
So, why did I start flirting with another franchise? In short: it’s not the Cowboys, it’s the Chiefs, and it has nothing to do with football.
To be clear, I was comfortably seated on the anti-Kansas City bandwagon.
For starters, I’m annoyed with the endless fawning over their star quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, with his meteoric ascension to greatness and his Head & Shoulders commercials. Do they have the refs in their back pocket, too? Well, it depends whom you ask on the Internet on any given Sunday.
There’s also the whirlwind romance between Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, which took over the league’s television coverage. Will they ever tie the knot? I don’t care, I just want to see the games!
In short: it was easy for me to superficially “hate” the team. So, what changed?
It all started with my family’s favourite Latin Mass-loving kicker, Harrison Butker.
He made a strong impression with his unapologetic devotion to the Catholic faith and his service as an altar server. Hey, it’s not every day you find an NFL kicker who can nail a 62-yard field goal, win a Super Bowl, and pray in Latin. His love for Christ won us over, but his stock rose to new heights with his “controversial” commencement speech last May.
Butker was addressing the graduating class at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, where he spoke from the heart about life, family, and faith, talking about everything from the erosion of Christian values to the evils of abortion. He also denounced the dangers of gender ideology and the “diabolical lies” that he said women are being told about their traditional vocations.
“Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world,” he told the graduating women in the crowd. “But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world. I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.”
It’s no shocker that he faced a tidal wave of backlash online and in the legacy media over his comments.
No one would have been surprised if the Chiefs and their players distanced themselves from Butker, but do you know what happened? Mahomes came to his defense, telling reporters, “I judge him by the character that he shows every single day, and that’s a good person.”
Later in the year, when Butker founded a political action committee to encourage Christians to vote for their traditional values, the Chief’s owner stood by his man. During a press conference in October, Clark Hunt, the Chiefs’ chairman and CEO, told reporters: “One of the things I talk to the players every year about at training camp is using their platform to make a difference. We have players on both sides of the political spectrum, both sides of whatever controversial issue you want to bring up. I’m not at all concerned when our players use their platform to make a difference.”
Hunt is no stranger to promoting Christian values. In 2019, the Tyler Morning Telegraph reported that he told a men’s luncheon how he was committed to helping his employees “develop spiritually.” “In the National Football League, Christ is really glorified,” he said. “My identity is my faith in Christ.”
Then, last September, his family’s holding company, Unity Hunt, donated $300,000 to a political action committee that was running radio ads to oppose a pro-abortion ballot initiative in Missouri during the November elections.
All in all, it’s hard for me to root against an organization where the owners promote Christ and fight against abortion.
Yes, I’m still a Dallas Cowboys fan at heart, even though I feel like a traitor for “loving” another team like this, but I’m sure Jerry Jones won’t notice.
