Catching up with Chiefs fan, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner ahead of Super Bowl LV
Faulkner #Faulkner
Harris Faulkner: It’s crazy. You know it took somebody else to point that out to me recently. My husband… he says, “One of my friends asked about this picture of you that I put out in like a throwback Thursday a while ago. You know what I realized, (the Chiefs) were playing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.” I’m like, “No, no, no no!” I walked over and there was that little gold—or brass plaque on there and I mean I couldn’t believe it. I just hadn’t thought about it, you know? I said, “Boy I feel more tied to them than ever.” And that day, I don’t know why in the world they let themselves get down to the point where they had no one to choose from to sing that song. I don’t know what had happened, but FOX was carrying the last preseason game and it was against Tampa Bay. Somehow or another they came up short on an anthem singer. I don’t remember the exact backstory to it, but I just know that it was really last minute and they wanted somebody. Of course, I grew up on military bases, so the first song I knew the words to that was not a nursery rhyme was the national anthem because I had heard it so often. My dad was a combat pilot, growing up on those bases you would hear patriotic songs all the time. So that one was one that— it felt like a natural. The problem was, I talk for a living and you ruin your voice when you talk for a living. And if I could ever sing that song, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to on that day. It just didn’t even sound possible. I don’t know how they got so desperate, but they did and I’m really glad they did because it’s such a huge memory for me. Standing on the 50-yard line, centerfield, there were more than 70,000 people there and I just remember at the very end of the song. People had warned me, “They’re not going to let you get the song out. You’ve got all these words that (fans) can chime in on— on ‘home of the brave’ they might say ‘Chiefs.'” So the crew, the Chiefs organization had kind of got me ready. So when I got to, “land of the free, home of the brave” they put “the Chiefs” at the end and it was deafening… Now whenever I hear the national anthem, I will always pipe in, no matter where I am. If I’m at work and there’s a baseball game on during the day and I’m in my office and they get to the part I’m like Chiefs! Because that’s what it sounded like with 70,000-plus people. It was amazing.
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