Kansas Jayhawks to Play Home Games at Arrowhead Stadium and Children's Mercy Park in Kansas City

'Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City' Photo Credit: David Jones via Flickr

In the wake of the new 'Gateway District' project introducing a brand new David Booth Memorial Stadium, Athletic Director Travis Goff, Kansas Athletics, and Kansas Football all had a decision to make regarding where they were going to play home games for the 2024 season. The old stadium's structure has been mostly demolished to make room for the new $448 million renovations, and having a stadium at reduced capacity when your program is garnering more fandom and interest than perhaps ever before just isn't practical. An impasse presented itself and a decision needed to be made. That decision was made on January 30th, 2024, when Kansas Football decided it was going to go where it had never gone before. With the release of the Big 12 schedule, Kansas also announced that they were going to be playing home games at Children's Mercy Park, home of the MLS's Sporting Kansas City, and Arrowhead Stadium, home of the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs. Let's talk about it.

The Kansas Jayhawks' Homes Away from Home

The Jayhawks decided to play at the two closest stadiums that could hold football games in order to mitigate the hassle of dealing with reduced capacity. Children's Mercy Park hosted the NCAA Division 2 National Championship back in 2017, and Arrowhead Stadium is the home of the 3-time Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, so the two stadiums' abilities to host Kansas Jayhawks football games are proven. The Jayhawks will play their non-conference home games at Children's Mercy Park, those being against Lindenwood and UNLV, while they play their conference home games at Arrowhead, where they will face TCU, Houston, Iowa State, and Colorado. You can find the full schedule in the post below by Michael Swain on X.

Ironing it Out: What are the Potential Issues?

With this temporary move comes certain stipulations and logistics issues Kansas Athletics has already addressed or will be addressing at a later date. The major, broad, and most obvious issue at hand is location. The first issue that falls under location is that Children's Mercy Park is in Kansas City, Kansas, however, Arrowhead is located in Raytown, Missouri, which means Kansas Athletics will be paying Missouri sales taxes on top of the certain 'rent' type payments that they will need to pay to reserve the stadium. It will be expensive, but worth it for making sure Kansas football games are attended as heavily as possible. Another issue is ticket allotment. While Arrowhead will be able to host a crowd that would sell out The Booth and more, Children's Mercy does not have that capacity. There will be a 3,500 student ticket allotment, with likely no single-game ticket availability for these games held at Children's Mercy given the projected demand for season tickets. Finally, the issue of transportation comes about, specifically for students. How will students get to and from games safely? According to Will Backus of CBS Sports:

"Children's Mercy Park is actually in the state of Kansas, while Arrowhead Stadium is just across state lines in Kansas City, Missouri. Both are less than an hour's drive from Kansas University's campus, depending upon traffic. Kansas noted that it's also working to ensure access to both student transportation and accommodations for each of the home games."

Kansas Athletics seems to have this issue under control as well, which clears up perhaps the biggest issue of the temporary locations. The Jayhawks will be offering different season ticket packages to fans based on their availability for these games, including a 4-game package for just the games at Arrowhead, among others per JayhawkSlant.

'A New Era'

This announcement likely wouldn't come if Kansas Athletics didn't feel fully prepared and confident that this could be done for the 2024 season. The renovations to The Booth are projected to be done by the 2025 football season, and with the donations coming in like never before, there shouldn't be any delay. An exciting, new era of Jayhawk football has made itself known, if not with the Jayhawks' best finish since 2007 last year, then with this new stadium and newfound love for this football program that just 4 years ago finished the 2020 season without a single win for the second time in a decade. Kansas Athletics and those with an interest in the University of Kansas, want this football team to be good and to have the resources to maintain greatness, and it is showing with moves like these.