KINGDOM QUARTERBACK

Can football save a city? In this story from the heartland, the answer just might be yes.

By 1920, Kansas City, once just “a tiny trading post on the frontier,” was transforming into “a wide-open, freewheelin’ river town, a rollicking den of gambling and booze, [and] a second-tier financial center for the cattle and wheat industries.” So write native sons and sportswriters Dent and Dodd in this lively and meaningful book. As the authors also note, for all its positive qualities—interesting architecture, vast parks, broad boulevards, and excellent barbecue—the city also has problems ranging from overcrowded freeways to long-standing racist housing covenants, “fueled by booze and beef,” with a past checkered by organized crime and political corruption that made of it “a haven for lawlessness, vice, and outsize dreams.” Enter the visionaries who brought professional sports to the city as a boost for civic pride: first, the baseball squad that would become the Royals, and then a gridiron team from Texas that took a long time to catch on. Now enter Patrick Mahomes, “unlike any football player Kansas City had seen.” A charming young man from a multiracial background, Mahomes displayed a rocket arm, an impeccable football mind, and a willingness “to try shit, even when it seemed unorthodox.” A surefire Hall of Famer who will likely finish his career as one of the best ever, Mahomes led the Chiefs to a Super Bowl victory, the first in half a century, in 2019 (and another in 2023), and has become “the single most important person in Kansas City right now,” inspiring city leaders, planners, and developers to do better—e.g., to improve inner-city neighborhoods and make homeownership accessible to those often denied mortgages, among many other civic improvements.

Chiefs fans will find this a revelation, and urban planners might learn a thing or two, too.