The Kansas City Chiefs boosted their secondary this week with the signing of safety Tyrann Mathieu to a three-year, $42 million deal.
Those three years should give the Honey Badger plenty of time to verse himself in the rivalry between Kansas and Missouri — not even the schools, but the actual states.
It comes as a surprise to many people who have never visited Kansas City, but the Kansas-Missouri state line goes through the city. There is a Kansas City in Missouri. There is a Kansas City in Kansas. The Chiefs and Royals both play on the Missouri side. Downtown Kansas City is also located on the Missouri side. The Kansas side of the city is home to Sporting KC and the Kansas Speedway. See: easy!
Mathieu is new to all of this. He tweeted that he followed new Kansas coach (and former LSU coach) Les Miles to Kansas — unaware that he will be playing in Missouri and paying Missouri taxes.
Kansas Citians on both sides of the state line hate it when people fail to make that distinction. It’s a long story, but the two states have lingering cultural bitterness towards each other from Civil War-era conflicts that permeate to this day in the KU-Mizzou rivalry and general interactions between Kansans and Missourians. They look down on one another and consider this common mixup an insult. Think the Pawnee-Eagleton rivalry from Parks and Recreation but, like, rooted in violence.
Chiefs fans — and Patrick Mahomes — waited little time to get Mathieu up to speed.
To be fair to Mathieu, he could still purchase or rent a home on the Kansas side. If he did that, his statement would be 100 percent correct. And either way, Kansas City is about an hour away from Lawrence, Kan. He gets to be close to Miles and plans to attend Thursday’s Kansas-Texas game with his former coach.
That game will be played in Missouri, in case he was wondering.
