Some claim there is a rigged Super Bowl in Las Vegas. And it’s not due to Taylor Swift
At Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, the Kansas City Chiefs are unbeaten, and Hawaii-born construction worker Gerard DeCosta believes that may be related to him.
Although DeCosta is nearly 4,000 miles away from Kansas City, he is an avid fan of the team, and the Chiefs have a long-standing, acrimonious rivalry with the Las Vegas Raiders. His employer put him to work on a new stadium the Raiders, the hated team, were building in Las Vegas towards the end of 2017.
“As soon as I got the opportunity, I knew what I had planned already,” DeCosta says.
The idea was to bury a “Chiefs Kingdom” flag beneath the home field of the opposition team. Cast a curse on those who oppose you.
A tweet appeared with an image of DeCosta holding the bright red and gold banner while standing at the construction site wearing his white hardhat. According to the tweet, the flag is now covered in concrete beneath the center of the field of play.
Everything went crazy.
“I received a call from the Raiders president when this first happened. “Did you see what’s going on with social media?” he asks. Tommy White, the business manager and secretary treasurer of Laborers Union Local 872 in Las Vegas, recalls, “Did they really plant this flag at the stadium?
White made an effort to convince Mark Davis, the owner of the Raiders, that this was not feasible. Subsequently, he proceeded to locate and address this Chiefs flag agitator who was conducting illegal excavation.
“After finding him, I asked, ‘Gerard, did you really dig up this flag?'” ‘I’m not gonna say I did, or I didn’t,’ he says. “Listen, it’s critical because they will remove you from the site,” I said.
White insisted on seeing the offending flag. DeCosta created a flag identical to the one shown in the picture. (Similar flags aren’t particularly scarce—they presently sell for roughly $14 on eBay.) DeCosta, though, is furious with what he did with The Flag. When challenged, he
Nevertheless, since Allegiant Stadium opened in 2020, the Raiders have never defeated the Chiefs at home. In other words, if there is a curse, it is working, and from the perspective of many Boston and Chicago supporters, this is not the first time.
There was the Curse of the Bambino for Boston. In 1920, the Red Sox struck a deal with the Yankees that sent Babe Ruth to New York, and Ruth dropped a bomb on the team. Despite being one of the most successful teams in baseball, the Red Sox had to wait 86 years to win another national championship.
In 1945, the Chicago Cubs encountered the Billy Goat Curse. When a tavern owner brought his foul-smelling goat into a World Series game, Wrigley Field banned him. As he left, he yelled, “Those Cubs, they aint gon’ win no more.” The Cubs lost the series after blowing a two-game lead. After 108 years, they were able to finally win the World Series in 2016.
White is positive Allegiant Stadium is curse-free, but he can see why so many people want to believe in magic hidden beneath the ground.
I mean, who wouldn’t want to believe in a conspiracy theory? It would be so nice to go back and say that the Raiders ought to have won a few of those games. Come on, they really lost four games at home, is that right? In opposition to the Chiefs. However, he concludes that the Chiefs had a superior team in the end.
White claims that there won’t be any extra lucky charms for the Chiefs in the big game. In fact, he believes that the Chiefs will most likely be the target of any small planted curses that are in effect at Allegiant Stadium on Sunday.
It’s true that everyone wants to think they are part of a conspiracy. It would be so satisfying to turn around and say that some of those games should have been won by the Raiders. Come on, they really lost four games in their own stadium? The Chiefs are the opposition. However, the Chiefs had a superior team in the end, he claims.
White says there’s no way the Chiefs will have extra luck in the big game. If there are any small curses in Allegiant Stadium on Sunday, he says they will most likely be working against the Chiefs.
After all, when Kansas City attempts to defeat the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl 58, it will be using the Raiders’ field and locker room.
