How to be an Adult, 101: Stop Saying the Chiefs Get Special Treatment

Plus, White Death visits Cincinnati and (one of) Penn State's staggering wrestling stats.

Jan 17, 2025

The Refs and the Chiefs

At some point, we grow up, right? We teach our kids about accountability, about not blaming others and about the unbecoming-ness of perpetually whining. To provide examples for them, we attempt walking the walk ourselves, yes?

Precisely because a certain NFL team has won a boatload in recent years, something’s happened to normally sane ladies and gents.

They hate the Kansas City Chiefs. Like, hate them.

Fan bases despising dynastic teams isn’t anything new. We know that. Ask Red Sox fans what they think of the Yankees. Having readily available platforms for vitriolic rants is what’s different today.

Most cringey?

The otherwise-known-as-social-media-for-old-people, Facebook, is filled with adult fans clamoring that the NFL has given marching orders to refs to assist Mahomes and Co. in winning games.

That’s the charge. That’s the whine heard loudest in NFL cities whose home teams have noted rivalries with the Chiefs’ find-a-way-to-win-no-matter-what 2024-25 team.

The BlameGame is at an all time high. My hometown might be the guiltiest. Arguing with Cincinnati friends that they’re nuts has proven fruitless. I do it anyway. I’m nuts, too.

But, there are inconvenient truths even Al Gore couldn’t argue. Someone who goes by the handle D-Sleezy on Reddit laid out some facts about the Chiefs I had to double check. With a name like D-Sleezy, seemed like a good idea.

Imagine my surprise, learning that since Mahomes became the Chiefs’ starter in 2018, the Chiefs have been called for 846 more penalty yards than their opponents, the third worst differential in the NFL - as DS claimed. In the same span, the Chiefs have been called for offensive holding 196 times, the most holding calls of any team in the league. Sleezy was right about that, too. In fact, he was accurate with everything.

The popular myth that Mahomes “always gets the call” anytime he’s touched by a defensive player is just that - a myth. Since he’s been in the league, Mahomes has played in 112 games, dropping back to pass 4,171 times. Surely he leads the league in getting roughing-the-passer calls, right?

Nope. When he’s dropped back to throw, it’s happened 30 times in Mahomes’ career. That’s .007 percent of the time. James Bond was roughed up by hooligans more frequently.

“Okay, okay,” the masses whin…er…cry…er…say. “But, Mahomes gets the calls when it matters most! Especially on third and long and any time the Chiefs go for it on fourth down!”

During the current 2024-25 campaign, the Chiefs benefitted twice from penalties - the entire year - in both scenarios.

Twice.

When looking at second-half penalties this year in one-score contests, no team has had more flags thrown against them than the Chiefs.

Why do we howl about the unfairness of it all? Because it’s easy, much easier than admitting, “Damn. They’re good.” The Chiefs are chasing another Lombardi trophy in three-peat fashion, and 31 NFL fan bases hate it. Or, maybe we wail because we truly think they’re unfairly favored. The facts prove otherwise.

And maybe there’s a rational reason, like this:

We’ve seen Mahomes and the Chiefs in 37 prime time games since he took over as the Chiefs starter. He’s also played in 18 playoff games. Viewers at home, nationwide and over the last seven seasons, have essentially seen three years worth of Chiefs games. When flags favoring the despised, current version of the Brady Patriots/Young-Montana 49ers/Bradshaw Steelers, we remember them more than calls favoring the Giants or Raiders.

Widely circulated, photoshopped and AI-generated pics of Mahomes and referees kissing or hugging are funny. The underlying insinuation is silly.

I mean, imagine the uproar of Cincinnati fans’ if the (actual) picture below featured Mahomes instead of Joe Burrow?

When my oldest, Aidan, was in kindergarten, he’d get off the bus and talk about “Whiney Jake.” One of his classmates complained all the time, apparently, and WhineyJake became a thing in our house. “Quit being a WhineyJake,” has been said to everyone in our household, by everyone.

Judge not. Each family has its thing.

I’m a diehard Bengals fan. I used to say I was a hopeless diehard, but Burrow, Ja’marr Chase and the last four seasons have restored hope I’d lost the last three decades. But, let’s stop the silliness.

Quit being WhineyJakes.

Snowy Cincinnati

Last week’s snow had me thinking of my dad. These days, it doesn’t take much.

My dad didn’t shake his head or roll his eyes a whole lot. There’s a certain temperament of those with the habit of doing each. Dad didn’t have it.

There were, however, a few exceptions - like weather that closed businesses and schools in Cincinnati.

I was born in Vermont. When I was 10, we moved to Delhi, Ohio, a westside Cincinnati suburb.

Unlike a lot of overly-nostalgic babblers, Dad didn’t have a cranky, “we were tougher back in the day” disposition. I never heard him say the phrase. But, sweet-mercy-the-apocalypse-is-upon-us reactions of locals whenever it snowed did make him smile. Forecasts calling for two inches of White Death - and crowded Krogers the night before - humored him.

“What Cincinnati calls a blizzard was a heavy frost in Vermont,” Dad once said.

In fairness, residents of the Green Mountain state had at least one four-wheel drive vehicle before they became commonplace-chic. The ski tourist industry of the town in which we lived. Stowe, had salt trucks and plows out at all times, too. If skiers couldn’t get to the slopes, a big chunk of the town’s commerce was affected.

Still, observing the response to news of coming snow was one of Dad’s simple pleasures of living in the 513. Before his retirement in 2008, the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist, Jim Borgman - who took hilarious jabs at how locals viewed oncoming dustings - was one of my parents’ favorites. Depending on who saw it first, Mom or Dad would share his cartoons with the other, particularly when an inch of snow covered front lawns. It was just too much for a guy who grew up in Boston and spent years in Vermont - listening to locals wonder if our city had a shot to host the Iditarod.

So here we are today, after hunkering down for a week against a pretty good - by Cincinnati standards - snow blast. To be sure, 8 to 12 inches is a decent measure no matter where one lives. In the Queen City, it conjures End-Times notions. My two remaining high school live-ins were off school for three weeks on the heels of Christmas break and last week’s snow. My sophomore, bless his heart, had to relearn the alphabet.

Both lamented the nerve their schools had, restarting school this week.

Hope you’re all dug out and toasty this week. Canned goods, bottled waters and matches aren’t bad things to have stocked, anyway.

And since I leave a few readers angry if I don’t write about college wrestling, and since it’s a pretty insane stat for any sports fan…

The Penn State wrestling team (7-0) has outscored opponents this year 378-9. In their seven dual meets - and out of a possible 70 individual matches (10 weight classes multiplied by seven duals) - they’ve lost three individual matches.

They’re numbers that are beyond Wooden-esque. Coach Cael Sanderson’s grapplers have won 10 of the last 12 NCAA titles, and Sanderson is only 45.

The only wrestler to grace the cover of a Wheaties box, Sanderson was 159-0 and bagged four NCAA titles during his own four-year career wrestling for Iowa State. The guy’s used to putting up jaw-dropping numbers.

Seems he’s not stopping anytime soon.

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