Ingram's August 2022

s MISSOURI SPORTS

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The National Football League franchise, which moved here from Texas in 1963, earned im mediate recognition for on- field excellence in the years before the first Super Bowl— and in fact, represented the old American Football League in Super Bowl I back in 1967. A long drought of 50 years followed before the Chiefs made it back, but they did it in fine fashion, defeating the San Francisco 49ers with an epic fourth-quarter comeback to become world champions after the 2019 season. The team made back to-back appearances but lost the 2021 Super Bowl to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and came within a hair of a third straight appearance before losing to Cincinnati in the AFC championship game this past season. Despite the final-game disappoint ments of the past two seasons, the Chiefs’ recent run of excellence has made them the only team in more than 100 years of NFL history to host four straight conference championship games. That has gone a long way to expanding their fan base across Mis souri—indeed, the nation. And those goes for football-starved fans in St. Louis, which lost its NFL bragging rights when the Rams moved to Los Angeles after the 2015 season. That success has made the Chiefs one of the hottest tickets in town. Save for the eminently forgettable 2020 season played largely without fans in the stands (thanks, COVID!), the team has averaged roughly 74,000 in game-day attendance for a decade. So e K a n s a s C i t y t . L o u i s C a r d i n a l s

popular a draw is tailgating at Arrowhead Stadium, fans will show up with smoking units in tow, spending the night before and most of Game Day prepping for a barbecue bonanza—and many of them are there for that experience alone, never setting foot inside the stadium. Baseball For a brief, shining stretch in the mid-2010s, Kansas City was just about the hottest thing going in pro baseball, breaking a 30-year championship series dry spell with back-to-back World Series appearances in 2014-15, winning it all in six games the second time around. That made the Royals the talk of the sports world, but in St. Louis, the Cardinals have appeared in the World Ser- ies 19 times in their 118 seasons, made the playoffs 31 times, and won it all an impressive 11 times. Things have cooled a bit since the last Series title in 2011, but the Cards have nonetheless posted winning seasons every year since 1999. College Sports Missouri—and specifically, the Univer sity ofMissouri—rocked the collegiate foot- ball world in 2010 by declaring its intent to join the Southeastern Conference after more than a century of affiliation with the old Big Eight/Big XII and its predecessors. That put the Show-Me State’s premier Division I athletics program in the spotlight, with Saturdays in autumn challenging some of the nation’s elite. How elite? The SEC has produced the Bowl Series champion in 12 of the past 16 seasons, and from 2006-2012, it won seven straight. That’s the level of excellence that Missouri fans are treated to in football, and the university’s leadership firmly believed that taking the program to new heights would require going head-to-head with that level of competition. The state also boasts two other Div ision I programs, both in the Football Championship Division—Missouri State University in Springfield and Southeast Missouri State. And there is a host of NCAA Division II and National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics programs that bring football to small campus venues across the state. Perhaps the most prominent

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collegiate athletics program is in Maryville, where Northwest Missouri State has long been an annual contender for that division’s football championship. The Bearcats have made it to the Division II championship game 10 times, winning six of those, including back-to-back titles twice—in 1998-99 and again in 2015-16, a stretch that includes three out of four years at No. 1. Recently, however, Northwest has be come a formidable force on the basketball court, as well, with three straight national titles in basketball, a Division II record. Those programs are part of a basketball ecosystem that features five Division I programs—Mizzou, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Missouri State, Southeast Missouri State, and Saint Louis University. On the Ice Missouri even has a solid foothold in the National Hockey League, with the St. Louis Blues—the only pro team at that level between Columbus, Ohio, and Denver. As such, there’s a large regional fan base for the Blues that extends well beyond the St. Louis metro area. The fans waited nearly 50 years to see their team crowned champions, following three straight years of runner up finishes from 1968-70. But their loyalty was rewarded in 2019 with a Stanley Cup trophy in the only seven-game title series since 2011. Missouri also boasts several minor-lea gue pro hockey teams, including the Kansas CityMavericks and NCAA hockey programs at Mizzou, Missouri State, Maryville Uni versity, and Lindenwood University, the lat ter two both in the St. Louis area.

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D e s t i n a t i o n M i s s o u r i . c o m

Missouri’s Business Media

2022