Kingdom Quarterback. Mark Dent & Rustin Dodd.

 

Kingdom Quarterback.   Mark Dent & Rustin Dodd.

Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs, and How a Once Swingin’ Cow Town Chased the Ultimate Comeback.  

It seemed only fitting to be reading a very topical book about the current reigning NFL champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, while trying to pull off an unprecedented third straight super bowl victory, just before the event.   In fact, Kingdom Quarterback, features plenty of stories about Kansas City Chief superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes.   However, the co-authors of this book, Mark Dent and Rustin Dodd, also delve into the surprisingly intricate details of a major city literally in the middle of America.  

In addition to Mahomes, the authors provide an in-depth view of other important characters associated with the Kansas City franchise including head coach Andy Reid, teammate Travis Kelce and Dallas Texans, and Kansas City Chief owner, Lamar Hunt, to name a few.    The chapters containing the football content are skillfully alternated with episodes pertaining to the primitive and troubling history in the city of fountains.

Readers will learn about Mahomes’ upbringing in the rose obsessed town of Tyler, Texas.    The authors assert that Mahomes was a talented athlete and capable student with a likely photographic memory.   Obviously, all those skills served him well in the sports he played as an adolescent before emerging as a top-notch college quarterback, first round draft pick and MVP professional.  Dent and Dodd clearly did extensive research about Mahomes’ history and transactions as well as for many of the other characters including his father, Patrick Mahomes Sr. who happened to have been a major league baseball player, who undoubtedly influenced his son to participate in a variety of sports.   

The authors, both Kansas City natives, were more than fair and partial not only regarding the conduct of the characters and the performance of the team and franchise but also in reporting about the intriguing and widely unknown history of K.C.   The book explains that Kansas Citians, as they are known, are proud of their city and heritage as well as their football team.   However, the book does not shy away from discussing how it is also a city divided literally by highways and boulevards but also by race.     Dent and Dodd report how one of the prominent citizens and major developers in the early to mid-20^th century helped formulate beautiful, idyllic neighborhoods in the western suburbs of the city, but at a cost to some of the southwest show-me states’ residents, since those home buyers had to be Caucasian.   Those affluent and coveted communities are explained to prosper and exist due to racial covenants put in place in the early days.   In addition, the authors firmly report how the practice of redlining was rampant for generations keeping blacks on the east side of the city, fully segregated from the white citizens of the western communities.   The underbelly of these laws and strictly enforced policies kept whites from selling to potential minority buyers even if they wanted to do so.   

The attraction to the book, particularly for sports fans, is to soak up stories about the Chiefs, Mahomes and the football content.   However, the writers often filled the football-related chapters with minute details of various games over the decades.  This can be momentum killing during the reading particularly when trying to digest the individual plays and attempt to track and process what is being described.  In a lot of ways, the description of the games was probably not necessary to successfully complete this book.   

Overall, Dent and Dodd submit a pretty significant manuscript.   They take football as the backdrop and objectively blend it with the history, politics and civil rights of its many loyal citizens.    To the credit of the authors, the warts of the landscape are made clear and the ethos and pathos established over previous generations are not sugar coated.   Despite the recent football success of the Chiefs, the printed findings are easily a bitter pill to swallow for many Kansas Citians. In a book of just over three hundred pages, much of it is an easy and intriguing read and one does not have to be a Kansas City football fan to enjoy it.  Although the Chiefs failed to win super bowl LIX, the book, on the other hand, delivers a success for sports fans and all other readers, nonetheless.     

 

• You might like to read this book if you are a fan of Patrick Mahomes.
• You might like to read this book if you are a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs.
• You might like to read this book you relish reading about histories of American cities. 

Learn more about the authors on X:  https://x.com/mdent05; https://x.com/rustindodd