The Chiefs are meant to be hated, and it's absolutely okay to hate them

It is absolutely okay to hate the Kansas City Chiefs.

As the team readies for its fifth Super Bowl berth in six seasons, NFL fans are faced with a real dilemma. Is it finally acceptable to pull out the football torches and pitchforks and ramp up the Kansas City hate like never before?

Sunday's AFC championship win over the Buffalo Bills doomed fans who are tired of seeing quarterback Patrick Mahomes and company make the big game to ... another year of Mahomes and company making the big game.

Mahomes must know by now how frustrated his "haters" are that he keeps finding ways to make the Super Bowl, even after everything in the regular season points to other teams being more deserving. His sassy Kermit the Frog GIF in response to making Super Bowl 59 spoke volumes.

Only two of the last 11 Super Bowls haven't featured the Chiefs or the New England Patriots. It's why the Chiefs are effectively the new Patriots, and we all know where the Patriots landed by the end of the Tom Brady/Bill Belichick years. Nobody mourned New England's descent into the NFL's basement, and nobody will mourn Kansas City's inevitable tumble off the NFL's Mount Olympus once it eventually happens ... one day.

As trite as it is to quote Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight nowadays, his famous words ring true. You really do either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain in professional football The Chiefs are the NFL's villains, and societally, we love to hate villains and have every right to do so.

Between the allegations of "rigging" over, as ESPN's Adam Schefter pointed out, lopsided officiating performances in Kansas City playoff games to the truly bewildering streak of luck the team had to get wins in 2024, this season underlines as many as any how tiresome it can get to watch the Chiefs win.

The team being on the doorstep of a Super Bowl three-peat has brought out the sanctimony patrol in full force, with CBS Sports' Nate Burleson on Sunday admonishing anybody who wasn't grateful they were in the presence of one of the greatest NFL teams of all time. It was the same way with Brady's Patriots. The finger-wagging over complaining about these exhaustive juggernauts' sustained success abounded.

How dare we not bend the knee to watching our favorite football teams flail in the presence of greatness? How could we, mere peons in the grand scheme of football, deny Mahomes and his Chiefs from the all-time glories that we'd just love our teams to experience just once? We should be so lucky to get a whiff of the staunch ketchup fumes emanating from Mahomes' fresh dish of Andy Reid's macaroni and cheese.

Mahomes has gone from being the gawkish fellow from Texas Tech with the Kermit voice to being in contention with Brady for the best NFL quarterback of all time, and he grows more annoying in his success as the years go on. How many State Farm commercials can a guy be in?

Not to mention that tight end Travis Kelce has become one of the most overexposed celebrities in American media, heightened by his obsessively documented relationship with megastar Taylor Swift and his brother, Jason Kelce, basically taking over every single NFL segment on ESPN imaginable.

The dynamic reminds you a bit of Brady and tight end Rob Gronkowski, their offensive teammates a revolving door of veterans and rookies who either make their names in Kansas City or finally get a chance at winning a Super Bowl because they got fortunate enough to land in a Chiefs uniform.

The Chiefs are everywhere, and we're now expected to be happy for them lest we disrespect the very game of football. This is like forcing people to be happy for a billionaire who finds a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk.

How many times do we have to hear Kelce yell the lyrics to the Beastie Boys until we've justifiably had enough? How many times do we need to hear NFL broadcasters wax poetic about the greatness of Mahomes when he's not even playing like one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL?

How many times do we have to hear a team that has won three Super Bowls in five seasons groan on and on about how nobody believed in them when they're literally the most popular team in the country?

How many reruns of that obnoxious David Lynch nightmare State Farm Bundle-Rooski commercial do we have to watch until we "Bundle-Rooski-Doo" our remotes into the television screen and watch it shatter into a million fragments of color?

It is societally proper that we finally just take a deep breath and accept that the Chiefs are absolutely exhausting and that it will be good for all of us who don't sport Kansas City jerseys on game day when they finally fall off.

To be fair to Arrowhead's aces, the Chiefs deserve what they've accomplished because of how they've built the roster and how well they are coached. Few people will deny that. Success breeds financial viability, as bandwagons typically attract lots of love from the NFL.

In part because of the Swift-iness of it all, Kansas City's bandwagon can barely pull out of the driveway. It makes fiscal sense that the league is probably thrilled to have the Chiefs back once again for the big game. The ratings will probably be through the roof. They are the ringleaders in this wide world of sporting entertainment, and that won't change anytime soon.

However, that also makes them organically insufferable. We societally root for the underdogs because they have never won before, as David taking down Goliath is one of our oldest stories to explain why we always prefer to see the unlikely champions take the day over the established ones.

We live in strange times indeed when the literal Philadelphia Eagles (from Philadelphia, where Philadelphia sports teams and fans are) will become America's beloved hope to dethrone the Chiefs and prevent the noxious three-peat.

Most fans will be "Fly, Eagles, Fly-ing" around their living rooms out of pure spite, not for the City of Brotherly Love. Being sick and tired of the Chiefs is just part of the lexicon of what it means to be an NFL fan now, just like it was for that dominant bully of a Patriots dynasty during the 2000s and 2010s.

The most important thing here is that this is okay and normal. Part of cheering for a non-juggernaut is made more palatable by being able to exert your disappointments on the team that always comes out on top.

The Chiefs are exhausting, and most of us are exhausted. We do not under any circumstances have to hand it to them.

Hate on the Chiefs all you wish; it is good and proper for you to do. Until the next monster rises from the sea and starts winning all the Super Bowls, Kansas City will rightfully take our ire. We're sure they wouldn't have it any other way; it's not so lonely at the top.

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This article originally appeared on For The Win: The Chiefs are meant to be hated, and it's absolutely okay to hate them