Throughout the 2024 NFL season, there has been an ongoing narrative in sports media that the Kansas City Chiefs have benefited greatly from a number of very favorable calls from the referees.
So-called experts and callers to sports talk radio go as far as saying that the only reason Kansas City only lost two games this season is because the NFL and the league’s referees favor the Chiefs in that they get nothing but beneficial calls on a weekly basis.
Well, the Chiefs’ latest AFC Championship Game win, which many believe was rigged over a controversial spot on a 4th-down rushing play, has led to fans preparing a petition to compel a change.
A petition on Change.org is going viral entitled “Boycott NFL Games Until Adequate Officiating Fairness Measures Are Implemented.” Actually, that wasn’t the original title of the petition. Originally, it was titled, “Encourage the NFL to investigate the officiation of Kansas City Chiefs games.”
My first thought was that there are missed and erroneous calls in every NFL game. The Chiefs garner the most attention because they have been the best team in football over the past decade and have millions more viewers because they are on prime-time games more than most.
My second thought was that if such an investigation were to be launched, who would launch it? The NFL would probably investigate themselves and finish with the predictable response of “We have investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing.”
Trust me, there will not be an investigation of any sort. The NFL Referees Association has no shortage of power thanks in no small part to the backlash that the league received from the referees’ strike back in 2012.
This narrative is not going to go away until Kansas City loses a big game.
The biggest game upcoming is next week’s Super Bowl when the Chiefs will battle the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans. I will preview the 2023 Super Bowl rematch in next week’s column.
