Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost presented press secretary Josh Earnest with a team jersey featuring Salvador Perez and Eric Hosmer during the team’s visit to the White House in 2016.
Kansas City Star
When the Royals won the 2015 World Series, Josh Earnest was ecstatic, in part because it meant he would have the opportunity to meet the team.
The following summer, the Royals visited Earnest at what was then his workplace: the White House.
Earnest, who was White House press secretary when Barack Obama was president, is celebrating the success of another Kansas City team these days: the Chiefs. Earnest now works as communications director for United Airlines, which will air an ad aimed at Chiefs fans during the Super Bowl.
During a conference call Monday, Earnest talked about how great of a Chiefs fan his son is these days. He has no idea fans endured the heartbreak.
“It’s an exciting time to be a Chiefs fan,” said Earnest, who grew up in Kansas City. “I have a 9-year-old son and he doesn’t know anything other than a Chiefs franchise that is consistently a Super Bowl favorite and routinely makes deep runs in the playoffs. So it’s funny to look at it through his eyes, to be honest. But listen, (quarterback Patrick) Mahomes didn’t just transform the franchise, he transformed the league. And you know you’ve seen the impact he’s had with other quarterbacks, on other franchises, on other teams’ approach to the draft. He’s amazing and he’s still in his twenties, which is mind-boggling.
“But it’s a fun time to be a Chiefs fan. I don’t live in Kansas City anymore, but here, even in the suburbs of Chicago, you’re just as likely to wear a Chiefs jersey on a kid as you are a Bears jersey, which I think is another way to ‘evaluate the extraordinary impact this has. Mahomes and (tight end Travis) Kelce and Andy Reid had fans in the league and the sport all over the country.
The Chiefs are in the Super Bowl for the fourth time in five years and hope to win the Lombardi Trophy on Sunday for the third time in that span.
Earnest isn’t taking anything for granted in Super Bowl LVIII.
“It should be a great game on Sunday,” he said. “I don’t want to diminish the 49ers’ excellent season in any way. I think it’s going to be a really competitive game and it’s going to be fun to watch a great Chiefs defense, something we haven’t been able to say since I was a kid actually, going against a team, the 49ers, that has real weapons. So it’s going to be a lot of fun. I can not wait to be there.
This story was originally published February 7, 2024, 11:21 a.m.
From covering the World Series to the World Cup, Pete Grathoff has done a little bit of everything since joining the Kansas City Star in 1997.
