Not Our Year, Always My Team

MJ Wynn
Jan 8
3 min read

I became a Chiefs fan during a win.

The 2023 Super Bowl. Chiefs versus 49ers.

A game that felt massive even if you didn’t know all the history yet. I didn’t have years of context or deep-rooted loyalty going into it — I just knew I was watching something that pulled me in fast. The tension. The confidence. The way this team carried itself like it expected to be there.

Winning that game felt electric. It felt like stepping into something already in motion, already successful, already sure of itself. And I won’t pretend that didn’t shape how I saw this team at first. Coming in on a Super Bowl win sets expectations whether you mean to or not.

So when the next seasons came, I watched with that quiet assumption that things would mostly work out. That even if games got messy, there was a baseline of belief holding everything together. That the Chiefs were the kind of team that figured it out.

Then this season happened.

And I learned, very quickly, that fandom isn’t built on how you enter — it’s built on how you stay.

The 2025 season didn’t explode or collapse in a dramatic way. It didn’t feel like one giant disaster you could point to and say that’s it, that’s when everything went wrong. It was subtler than that. A slow unraveling. A series of games that stayed close but never tipped our way. A feeling that something wasn’t clicking, even when the effort was there.

At first, I brushed it off. Early-season weirdness happens. Slumps happen. Adjustments take time. I kept telling myself that because that’s what you do when you believe in a team. You give them grace. You assume the pieces will fall into place eventually.

But week after week, they didn’t.

Instead of excitement, Sundays started coming with tension. Instead of confidence, there was waiting. Waiting for the spark. Waiting for the moment it would finally look like the team I thought I was watching. And sometimes it felt close — a drive here, a stop there — just enough to pull you back in before it slipped away again.

This season was built on “almost.”

Almost comebacks.

Almost momentum shifts.

Almost enough.

And almost is exhausting.

What surprised me most was how much I felt it. I haven’t been a fan for decades. I didn’t grow up with this team. Hell, I grew up not even caring for the sport, so I don’t have a long history of heartbreak behind me. And yet, the disappointment still landed hard. Harder than I expected. Harder than felt reasonable for someone who hasn’t “paid their dues” in the traditional sense.

That’s when it clicked: time doesn’t determine attachment. Caring does.

Somewhere between that Super Bowl win and this season’s slow fade, this team stopped being something I watched casually and started being something I carried with me. Losses stopped feeling abstract. Wins stopped feeling like entertainment and started feeling like relief. I caught myself defending the team, getting frustrated when people wrote them off, feeling that weird protectiveness that sneaks up on you when you didn’t plan on it.

That’s when I knew I was in it.

And being in it is messy.

It means feeling disappointed without knowing exactly where to put that feeling. It means loving a team while also being frustrated with them. It means showing up even when it would be easier to check out for the rest of the season.

This year taught me that being a fan isn’t about catching the high points — it’s about sitting through the uncomfortable stretches too. It’s about watching when the magic doesn’t show up on cue. It’s about realizing that not every season is a continuation of the last one.

I also learned that disappointment doesn’t cancel loyalty. If anything, it sharpens it.

I’m still here. I still watched. I still cared. Even when it stopped being fun and started being frustrating, I didn’t walk away. And that feels important — because it tells me that this wasn’t just about joining a winning team. It was about connection.

This season didn’t reward belief. It challenged it.

And I think that’s why it mattered.

Because now I know what kind of fan I am. Not just someone who shows up when things are good, but someone who sticks around when things are awkward, uncertain, and unfinished.

So yeah — this wasn’t our year.

It was disappointing. It was frustrating. It forced me to recalibrate expectations I didn’t even realize I had. It stripped away the shine and left something quieter and more honest in its place.