The talk around the NFL is that the league — and more specifically, the referees — are rigging games every year so that the Kansas City Chiefs make it to the Super Bowl. This conspiracy theory revolves around the ratings that KC brings in due to popular figures like Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, among others.

Obviously, the higher the ratings, the more money everyone makes and so on.

While speaking with the Pat McAfee Show on January 29, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid was jokingly asked about these theories, and it was the first time that the future Hall of Fame HC has really reacted to this chatter publicly. Below was the exchange.

“Yeah, everybody else is crying — especially about the refs! Hey, have you heard that conversation?” McAfee transitioned from one question to another.

“You and the refs are meeting like what, tonight, for the Super Bowl? Is that what’s happening?” The host continued with a devilish grin.

All Reid could do was chuckle, replying: “Yeah right.”

“Listen, I try not to pay attention to any of that stuff,” the Chiefs HC added with a smile.

To which McAfee responded: “It’s loud coach, it’s loud. It’s stupid this happens whenever you win now. It happened to the [New England] Patriots for 20-plus years.”

And that was the end of it as McAfee moved on to another question.

The famed “The Dark Knight” quote comes to mind — “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become the villain.” It’s official, folks, the Chiefs have won long enough to become the NFL’s new villain, at least in the eyes of most fans.

McAfee’s right to reference the Patriots. For many years, Tom Brady and New England held that honor. And at one point, Kansas City was the heroic challenger that was attempting to take them down.

In the modern day, that’s become Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills, or Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens, but the Chiefs were once that team. Even during Mahomes’ first few years in the league, he was almost universally rooted for — but it appears times are changing.

The same contingent of fans that started the #NFLRigged hashtag have created a new movement, “Boycott the Super Bowl.” Although this movement currently has several hashtags according to a study performed by BetOnline.ag.

The team over at BetOnline.ag tracked over 180,000 X posts that included the following hashtags: “#BoycottSuperBowl, #BoycottSuperBowlLIX, #BoycottTheSuperBowl, #SuperBowlBoycott.” They also looked for clear “fan identifiers” in these posts, “such as #BillsMafia, #RavensFlock, #SteelersNation, etc.”

According to the results, Bills fans are the most upset by the Chiefs’ Super Bowl appearance — which makes sense as their most recent opponent. Buffalo fans have posted about boycotting the Super Bowl nearly 25,000 times since the AFC Championship game.

Next highest behind the Bills? You guessed it, the Ravens and their supporters with over 22,400 posts.

The Detroit Lions, Cleveland Browns and Minnesota Vikings fanbases all posted between 10,000 and 20,000 times too, and the New Orleans Saints, Miami Dolphins, Cincinnati Bengals, Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants fanbases finished with over 7,000 posts as of January 29.

You can view the full results courtesy of BetOnline.ag below. Surprisingly, AFC West rivals like the Los Angeles Chargers and Las Vegas Raiders are not all that high on this list.

Arrowhead Pride beat reporter Pete Sweeney had a message for anyone who believes the NFL is rigged in favor of the Chiefs. He shared it on X on January 28. It read:

As massive media platforms continue to persist with NFL officials sending the Chiefs to the Super Bowl, here are a couple of stats of note from the AFC Title:

– Patrick Mahomes outgained Josh Allen on the ground, 43-39, including two must-have touchdowns, something nobody saw coming.
– The Bills were 9 of 20 on third and fourth down (45%) after going 10 of 17 (59%) in the first game.
– The Bills’ defense allowed 30+ points to the Chiefs, which happened twice all season to NFC South teams.
– Steve Spagnuolo generated 16 pressures, and Allen was 4 of 13 on these plays.

And finally, the most important thought… I would imagine that ahead of the game, if you told the Bills they would have the ball down three with three timeouts and 3:33 on the clock, they would have signed up 10 out of 10 times. They failed.

Unfortunately, this noise is likely to persist throughout the Super Bowl and beyond, especially if the Chiefs defeat the Philadelphia Eagles.