KC Mayor says the quiet part out loud
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (News-Press NOW) -- In a radio interview, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas threw cold water on the excitement leading up to Chiefs training camp this time of year.
"The Chiefs have made it clear they aren’t returning to St. Joseph for training camp," Lucas told KCMO talk radio.
This was an odd statement, one that produced a clarification from the KC mayor’s office and a defensive posture in St. Joseph. Open practice begins July 22 in St. Joseph, the 15th time the Kansas City Chiefs have started their season at Missouri Western State University.
Maybe Lucas got ahead of himself. But was he wrong? In St. Joseph, the public fails to grasp the transactional nature of the relationship with the Chiefs. It’s a marketing opportunity for Mosaic Life Care and a source of prestige for Missouri Western and the city, but the team will only come to St. Joseph as long as it’s a good deal for them.
In St. Joseph, the standard reply to Lucas is that the Chiefs have reached an agreement to keep training camp at Missouri Western. But the agreement was vaguely characterized as a “multi-year” deal, with no information provided on the length of the contract or the number of extension options.
Until more information is available, there’s an opening for speculation and poaching. The Topeka Capital-Journal reported last year that Kansas lawmakers offered the Chiefs $32 million to move camp to Washburn University.
That offer (if it was made) went nowhere, but it’s a fair bet that the Chiefs will train in the state they play in. That will be a stipulation of any tax incentive package to renovate Arrowhead Stadium or lure the team to Kansas.
Kansas granted an extension on the offer to use STAR bonds to finance a move across the state line, keeping the pressure on Missouri. At a special session, the Missouri Legislature approved a stadium funding plan for the Chiefs and the Royals.
At this point, anything can happen. At the very least, Lucas should be more concerned about where the team plans to play its regular-season games.
Maybe he was technically wrong in what he said about Chiefs training camp, but the mayor’s comments make it clear that St. Joseph will have to continue delivering a world-class NFL experience. We should never take the future of training camp for granted.
