‘Almost Andy’: how one fan benefited most from the Chiefs’ winning run

How a mercurial run helped put Kansas City on the world’s map while changing the life of one Chiefs superfan

For years, the Chiefs most recognizable fan operated in the shadows. A regular at games since 1983, Matt Black cheered on KC through very little thick and and a whole lot of thin, an era marked mostly by a series of sports tragedies overseen by then head coach Marty Schottenheimer. Then, on one ordinary day in 2018, Black decided to shave his customary goatee leaving behind a mustache. He gazed into his bathroom mirror, and suddenly it wasn’t Black, a professional opera singer by trade, looking back at him. Instead, it was Chiefs head coach Andy Reid.

“It was purely by accident,” Black told the Guardian via video chat, while donned in full Chiefs regalia, sitting in front of a press conference backdrop that would fool just about anyone into thinking you were speaking to the HC himself. “I had no idea that I looked similar to coach Andy Reid. My wife had booked some tickets for us for a Halloween ball and everybody started coming up to me taking pictures. And I thought, ‘Well, that’s interesting.’”

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