The inevitable heartbreak of a championship game

Maybe one of the most cynical headlines ever written came out of the creative shop at Weiden and Kennedy when they created an ad for Nike that read: “You don’t win silver, you lose gold.” The ad was produced in advance of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia and stirred up controversy among Olympic athletes who found the headline to be insulting.

The ad was an attempt to continue the momentum brand Nike was enjoying with the AIR line of shoes following the departure of Michael Jordan and featured Lisa Leslie dunking the ball in slow motion – a sort of promise of things to come in the next few weeks at the women’s basketball venue in the ATL.

The toxic potential of fanaticism 

To me, this ad (and several others like it) are cool, edgy, interesting, clever … and very often, toxic. Sports brands and their agencies learned a long time ago, that playing to the more tribal aspects of fandom can generate huge financial rewards. The Colin Kapernick Super Bowl ads produced by Nike and leaked to the press generated tens of millions of social media impressions by an audience (generally ultra-conservative, older white males) that drove awareness of the brand and the product and rang the register (spiking Nike sales in the days leading up to the Super Bowl).

And Kapernick wasn’t even playing in the league anymore.

So what drives all of this? What takes fandom from love and passion for a team and twists it a bit too far? Maybe it’s how we look at winning – and you don’t really need to look any further than the reaction to Sunday night’s AFC Championship game to see the start of something that could be quite nasty.

Bengals DE, Joseph Ossai, chases down Kansas City QB, Patrick Mahomes in the AFC Championship Game on Sunday, January 29, 2023.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge Kansas City Chiefs fan. I have been since they were in the first Super Bowl, back in the 1960s. But the outcome of this most recent game against a resilient and very talented Cincinnati Bengals team – a re-match of the 2022 AFC Championship – is getting boiled down to just one play. A late hit on Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes by Bengals Defensive End, Joseph Ossai. 

That’s not fair to anyone who was on the field Sunday. And certainly not Joseph Ossai (who played a great game, by the way).

The fact is, the recipe for a successful championship run is often dependent upon missed opportunities and mistakes as it is hard work, perseverance, and talent. Sunday’s game was no different. There were a lot of people contributing to the Chief’s win (both on the field and on the sideline) and the Bengals never gave up.

The game was fun to watch – even if you were a die-hard Chiefs fan hoping they could pull it out in the end.

We shouldn’t minimize the effort put in by either team (players and staffs) and we shouldn’t bag on the referees who – whether you agree with their penalty calls and game clock management or not – put in an honest effort to keep things fair.

Could some things have been done better? You bet. But that’s always the case. No matter who’s playing or the final score.

I can hardly wait for the Super Bowl.

Go Chiefs.