Civil disobedience recently paid off for the founders of Save Our Chiefs, a group of superfans who had several standoffs with the team’s front office culminating in 2012’s infamous Arrowhead Blackout.
What’s the Arrowhead Blackout? It’s when Chiefs fans wore Raiders-associated colors to the stadium in protest of a multi-year long losing funk.
Five core members of the group gathered in North Kansas City at Chappell’s Restaurant and Sports Museum recently to collect authentic Super Bowl rings that were given to them by an anonymous donor. This donor credits the group, in part, for raising such a stink that Chiefs management were forced to make real changes. One of those changes was hiring Andy Reid for the 2013 season.
Marty McDonald, one of the Save Our Chiefs organizers was approached by the well-heeled good Samaritan, who reportedly said: “You guys did God’s work, and without Save Our Chiefs, we wouldn’t be here,” McDonald paraphrased. “We wouldn’t have the spoils of Super Bowls and Mahomes and Andy Reid.” The rings commemorate Super Bowl LVII, in 2023, which marked a decade since the peak of fan discontent.
Patrick Mahomes II does an excellent job of making sure we don’t take him for granted, with a behind-the-back pass every now and then just to check if we’re still paying attention, but a lot of the fans who are talking “three ‘peat” today might not remember how bad times were for Chiefs lovers just over a decade ago. Between 2007 and 2012, the team had one winning season, 2010, when then-quarterback Peyton Manning’s Indianapolis Colts muffled the Chiefs to a wildcard defeat.
Despite that, members of Save Our Chiefs, and other loyal fans, were still showing up at games, leaving Arrowhead hoarse, even if their team lost by several touchdowns.
But when Chiefs management, in the eyes of this group, didn’t seem to care about addressing fan concerns, these dudes got creative.
One member, Eric Granell, had airplane banners flown over games with suggestive messaging. “The first one said: ‘We Deserve Better. Fire Pioli. Bench Cassel,’” he remembered in one of the restaurant’s memorabilia-packed dining rooms, where some members of Save Our Chiefs gathered to collect their rings. “We took no pleasure in this. This was fun, but it wasn’t fun in the sense of [disparaging] this team that we love.”
For those who don’t remember, Pioli was former Chiefs’ general manager Scott Pioli. He was fired at the start of 2013 after a 23-41 record with the team. Quarterback Matt Cassel made the Pro Bowl in 2010, but that was his only winning season of four for the team.
As McDonald remembers it: “This whole movement started on Chiefs Planet on a Sunday night in September after we got our tails kicked in by the Chargers and everybody was bitter and grumpy,” he said.
“And what you did in 2012, is you got on an Internet message board and complained,” McDonald said.
The complaining led to networking, and the culmination of it all was Arrowhead Blackout, on Nov. 12, 2012, when thousands of fans wore black to a Chiefs home game against the Cincinnati Bengals in protest. Save Our Chiefs printed 500 black hoodies and as many black T-shirts that read: “Arrowhead Blackout,” with an image of the stadium and the date, before the game, and the apparel quickly sold out.
Granell wore his hoody, now well faded, on Saturday at Chappell’s with his four associates, many of whom haven’t met in person that many times. One of them, Frank Pagnotti, flew in from outside of Scranton, Pa., with his son for the ring celebration and Sunday’s game, which happened to be against Black Arrowhead opponent Cincinnati.
To demonstrate how much things have changed, the Chiefs took a now-usual last-seconds win over the Bengals, squeaking by 26-25 and ensuring its fans won’t likely be headed to any home games en masse in black any time soon.
