CLEVELAND — I can't even imagine the swing in emotion that is going on in Kansas City this week. The euphoria of the Chiefs winning Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday in an overtime thriller to the shock and sadness of having their championship parade bloodied by a mass shooting. That's so sad to even put that sentence together. A city always bursts with civic pride when one of its teams brings home a championship. The Chiefs have been stringing those together for Kansas City.
We certainly breathed that rare championship air here in Cleveland when the Cavs won the NBA title in 2016. Go around Cleveland and ask people do you remember the night the Cavs won Game 7? Where were you? Who were you with? They'll tell you right down to the tiniest detail. Those are the memories of a championship. And now we have this: one person is dead, 22 people were shot and at least three people are being detained with no motive for why a day of celebration turned into another mass shooting in our country.
I wonder if Wednesday's shooting might cause the end of these celebrations. Schools were closed in Kansas City so that children could go and see their beloved Chiefs parade through the streets and then rally at Union Station downtown. Most of the victims who were gunned down were kids. Simply said, large gatherings anywhere are not safe anymore. Wednesday was a parade. Over the weekend it was a church in Houston. There are school shootings, shopping mall shootings and just about any place where there are crowds we are all wearing targets on our backs.
Even the day the Cavs had their parade, with an estimated 1.3 million in attendance, there was a gun incident over at Tower City as the parade and rally ended. I have always dreamed about the day the Browns would win a Super Bowl and how Cleveland would go absolutely crazy. But after all of these public tragedies, could we have a parade?
Maybe sports celebrations are going to have to be different from now on. Maybe you will have to open your stadium for a celebration and allow your fans in there to toast the new champions. It will certainly limit the crowd numbers. But it might be the safest way to control the proceedings considering the threats that are out there in our country right now. It's very sad because fans wait and wait for the good times with their teams. To limit celebrations is a drastic step, but one that needs to be considered.
I don't know if you rooted for the Chiefs this past Sunday but if you're like me, I'm rooting for Kansas City today. The people of Kansas City and fans of the Chiefs just had their world turned upside down and I am so sorry for that.
I'll see you tonight on 3News!