Eric Warfield will head north from Dallas this week. He wouldn’t miss this rare collision of his past football lives.
Nebraska, his alma mater where he won three national titles. Arrowhead Stadium, where he starred in the Kansas City Chiefs secondary for all of an eight-year pro career that ended after the 2005 season.
“What would Kansas City be for me?” Warfield said. “I don’t think there’s a word for it like your college. I hope we can go out and get a victory and get this thing kicked off for a great year.”
Warfield will be part of the scene Thursday night when the Huskers and Cincinnati kickoff after 8 p.m. inside the home of the Chiefs for the inaugural Kansas City Classic. An expected crowd of 70,000-plus — the vast majority Nebraska fans — should make for a one-of-a-kind blended throwback vibe.
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For all the current connections between Big Red and the red and gold, a few prominent former stars of both will be watching closely as Nebraska plays at Arrowhead for the first time in 19 years.
Household names along with Warfield like Neil Smith, an All-America defensive end at Nebraska (1984-87) and five-time Pro Bowler with the Chiefs. And Will Shields, the 1992 Outland Trophy winner who spent all 14 seasons of his Pro Football Hall-of-Fame career (1993-2006) as K.C.’s right guard.
Smith, whose son Keelan, is a redshirt freshman receiver and could see meaningful game action for the first time Thursday, already knows Husker supporters and Chiefs backers own the same zeal and red-dominant wardrobe. His neighbors and doctor in Kansas City are out-of-state NU people, they reminded him recently.
“They are super fanbases in so many ways that resemble each other,” Smith said. “The loudness. The respect. The turnout. They love to tailgate here. I’m sure Nebraska fans will have a lot of room to tailgate with them all together.”
Shields, who also lives in Kansas City, will be talking with area Husker alums at a function Wednesday evening but is traveling the day of the game. He’ll be following along from an airport.
Maybe some of the greatness that has settled in Arrowhead — K.C. is 57-14 at home in the last seven seasons, including 12 straight wins — will rub off on the college program a three-hour drive to the northwest.
“The Chiefs have done something that’s beyond purposeful with what they’ve produced,” Shields said. “I hope Nebraska gets back to being that way. This could be that next step of Nebraska growing its next legacy.”
Warfield, who will attend the game with fellow Dallas resident and former Husker men’s basketball player Walter Pitchford, sees plenty in common between NU and the team whose home it will visit. Start with the quarterbacks, where sophomore Dylan Raiola and three-time Super Bowl champion Patrick Mahomes share everything from skin tone to hair style to body build to No. 15 jerseys.
“So much of his identity reminds me of Patrick,” Warfield said.
Warfield doesn’t know how Thursday night will end. But he’s confident what will happen when players get to the venue that has hosted six of the last seven AFC championship games.
“I guarantee you the kids are going to peek around,” Warfield said. “You’ll find stuff in somebody’s locker you’re going to want to look at, pick up, take pictures of, sniff, I don’t know. They’ll see somebody’s locker and say, ‘I can’t believe I’m here.’”
The 53-year-old Shields, who works for the NFL helping players transition into and out of the league, said the Arrowhead setting could inspire the Huskers to double down on their own football futures.
It helps to see what’s ahead. For some this will be their only chance to put cleats to grass on a pro field.
Smith will be on hand with loads of extended family and all of Keelan’s seven siblings, three of whom still live at home — “they’ll be a little tired in school Friday,” Smith laughed. Nine seasons with the Chiefs (1988-96) taught the 59-year-old just how much Arrowhead can sway an outcome when it’s rocking.
It will be for the Huskers with perhaps more than 60,000 partisan Big Red spectators in the house.
“The fans are sitting on top of you looking down into the bowl,” Smith said. “It can be a great advantage.”
Smith and Shields stay in regular touch — they got together twice just last week as participants in different local golf events. Warfield includes both in separate group chats he created for former Huskers and Chiefs teammates.
Their exchanges these days mostly revolve around golf. Smith is the best at it, they all agree, routinely shooting in the mid-80s with an occasional finish in the high 70s even after undergoing back surgery last year.
“We talk more about older-people things but we do talk about the Huskers too,” Shields said. “We all have our little feelings about how they could do. They still have us as fans.”
Warfield tends to lock in more on game days for the Chiefs than the Huskers – perhaps no surprise given how the last decade has gone for each team. That could change if Nebraska levels up in the college football landscape and gives the former defender something new to brag about.
A return to the Red Kingdom will feel good either way.
“I’ll get a couple days of golf out there,” Warfield said. “And hopefully come back with a victory against Cincinnati.”
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