Super Bowl: Here’s where things stand as Chiefs resume practice, NFL unveils schedule

Jeff Rosen

We’ve passed through what might be considered the last “quiet” day before Super Bowl LIV for the Kansas City Chiefs.

But let’s not take those words too literally — a heck of a lot has been going on. Players have been working out, Andy Reid and his assistant coaches are deep in preparations for the Feb. 2 game against the San Francisco 49ers, and a crew employed by the team was busy late in the afternoon hanging a banner from the downtown Sprint Center.

Wednesday is when the Chiefs will return to plain view for the first time since confetti fell at Arrowhead Stadium and tight end Travis Kelce reminded us that we must in fact fight for our right to party.

Reid and many of his Chiefs players, including MVP quarterback Patrick Mahomes, will meet with a growing legion of reporters around midday Wednesday. They’ll be asked about getting ready for the Niners, about the team’s health (quite good after the Titans game), and of course about the sunny climes of south Florida ... where the temperature was forecast to plunge to a less-than-toasty low of 43 Fahrenheit overnight Tuesday. B-r-r-r-r ...

Here in KC, it was 8 when some of us awoke today. And snow is expected overnight.

But back to the Chiefs, and the Super Bowl. Our plan, starting with this first installment you’re reading now, is to keep Chiefs fans abreast of what our coverage team is doing leading up to and through the big game via disclosure posts — here’s what’s happening, that sort of thing. Hopefully, the aftermath will include a parade like the one we enjoyed five years ago when the Kansas City Royals won the 2015 World Series and the town was painted blue.

The Star is sending a team of 11 journalists to Miami to cover the Super Bowl and related festivities. The first deployment arrives Sunday in Miami: The A-Team of beat writers Herbie Teope and Sam McDowell, podcaster extraordinaire/veteran reporter Blair Kerkhoff and columnists Sam Mellinger and Vahe Gregorian, as well as visual journalist Tammy Ljungblad. All will be in place for the NFL’s Opening Night (formerly known as Media Day) on Monday.

This guy flies down Tuesday, and the rest of our photo/video team, Jill Toyoshiba and Rich Sugg, gets there Thursday.

This Super Bowl is kind of a dream matchup for McClatchy, our parent company that owns 30 newsrooms around the country. We’ve got the Chiefs (covered by The Star) playing the 49ers (covered by sister paper The Sacramento Bee) in Miami, where two more of our publications (The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald) are located and will be reporting alongside us en masse.

What does this mean to you as Chiefs fans? Good things! Wall-to-wall, up-to-the minute reporting on your favorite team, the opposition and everything associated with the biggest event Kansas City will have witnessed since the 2014 and 2015 World Series, and probably, before that, President Truman’s election. What else compares? The Super Bowl drew 98 million viewers around the world last year, so let’s use 100 million as a starting point for this year’s edition of sports’ greatest spectacle.

Once we’re on-site, I’ll use this space to keep you updated on what’s happening around town as kickoff approaches. Expect some behind-the-scenes stuff, fun stuff, as well as links to highlights of the many stories we’ll be following, along with some insight from those covering and attending Super Bowl week.

As noted in our recent story on the cost of Super Bowl tickets, not everyone can afford to attend. Even those with the means to do so will start to find a scarcity of tickets as game day draws near. The last time the Chiefs played in a Super Bowl, Super Bowl IV at New Orleans’ Tulane Stadium on Jan. 11, 1970, you could walk right up and buy tickets at the window for $15. Even taking inflation into account, that was a $100 ticket in today’s dollars.

My, how times have changed.

For now, and probably the next several days until things get cranking in Miami, we’ll use this space to share a few standout stories and columns we’ve done this season, or in the recent past, about the Chiefs — sort of a “greatest hits” playlist of work that’s worth a second look if you swim in the sea of red.

Also on the horizon (and you know how much we love special sections): a Sunday, Jan. 26 special edition of The Star chronicling the Chiefs’ road to the Super Bowl, reliving each of their 18 games that delivered them to Miami. Remember, this season had trying moments mixed in with the glorious ones — Mahomes going down in Denver with what at the time looked like a season-altering injury, for instance, or the loss at Tennessee in which members of the Chiefs’ special teams coughed up a hairball. It’ll all be in there, a collective, commemorative recounting of the twists and turns that produced a Super Bowl experience for the first time in 50 years.

Then, on Sunday, Feb. 2 — game day in Miami — we’ll be publishing two special editions in The Star. One will detail and preview in depth everything fans will want to know ahead of the 5:30 p.m. Central Time kickoff, and a second will illustrate just how much the Chiefs are beloved in Kansas City and beyond. #ChiefsKingdom really does extend worldwide. But you already know that, right?

If you want to buy a copy of our special Chiefs sections leading up to this point, here’s the place. (Note that we reprinted thousands of extra Monday editions, containing coverage of the Chiefs’ AFC Championship Game victory, but those, too, have now sold out.)

I’ve gone on way too long here, so we’ll cover two more things and then wrap it up for now. Remember to catch our daily episodes of the KC SportsBeat podcast and all of our continuing Chiefs coverage at Kansascity.com. And if you don’t already subscribe, a mere $30 per year will fix that.

Here’s the just-announced media availability schedule we’ll be following next week (all times Central):

  • Sunday, January 26—3:40 p.m. Chiefs’ arrival in Miami (photo opportunity only; no interviews); 6:10 p.m. 49ers’ arrival (photo opp only; no interviews).

  • Monday, Jan. 27—Super Bowl Opening Night at Marlins Park: 6:10-7:10 p.m. for the Chiefs (all players, coaches); 8-9 p.m. for 49ers (all players, coaches).

  • Tuesday, Jan. 28—9:45-10:35 a.m. Chiefs media availability with head coach and 10 players, including Patrick Mahomes; 11:40 a.m.-12:30 p.m. 49ers media availability with head coach and 10 players.

  • Wednesday, Jan. 29—7-8:15 a.m. Chiefs media availability with head coach, assistant coaches and players; 3-4:15 p.m. 49ers media availability with head coach, assistant coaches and players.

  • Thursday, Jan. 30—7-8:15 a.m. Chiefs media availability with head coach, assistant coaches and players; 3-4:15 p.m. 49ers media availability with head coach, assistant coaches and players.

  • Friday, Jan. 31-Saturday, Feb. 1—no media access to teams.

  • Sunday, Feb. 2—Super Bowl LIV, Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, kickoff 5:30 p.m.

  • Monday, Feb. 3—7:30 a.m. news conference with winning head coach and Super Bowl MVP.

And finally, as promised, here are some links to cool stories from Mellinger, Herbie and the gang that you can check out as we all try to stay warm during this next winter storm:

Good and lucky: How Patrick Mahomes wound up in Kansas City, quarterbacking the Chiefs

Andy Reid: His future began to take shape as a kid in Los Angeles

A cancer survivor, Chiefs’ Mike Pennel returns to the place that ‘saved my life’

Headlined by record-setting Travis Kelce, Andy Reid’s ‘Tiger Personnel’ poses problems

Can Mecole Hardman replace Tyreek Hill in Chiefs’ offense? That’s not his objective