Fans should forgive former Chiefs Tight End

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — When Tony Gonzalez went to Utah last month to sit and be measured and otherwise probed for his Pro Football Hall of Fame bust by artist Blair Buswell, he understood that Buswell sought to convey his essence instead of his mere appearance.

Part of that meant simply asking Gonzalez what expression he wanted to project on a representation that Gonzalez figures “could be there for 1,000 years.” He considered the options presented by Buswell, who has molded some 100 of these for the Hall of Fame as its primary sculptor since 1983 and has been known to dissuade open-mouthed smiles for the bronzing — what with brown teeth seeming unappealing and all.

While Gonzalez wondered on Twitter if he should “mean mug or smile,” there never really was a question.

“Smile,” he said, in fact smiling from across a table at his home on Wednesday. “I’ve got to just go with me.”

So that’s how the man who refined, if not redefined, the tight end position with the Chiefs (and, yes, continued doing so with the Falcons) will appear when he’s inducted on Aug. 3 in Canton, Ohio, along with seven others including Chiefs’ safety extraordinaire Johnny Robinson.

And here’s hoping that some disillusioned Chiefs fans will now smile back, stop fixating on ultimately puny grievances and just go with him on this journey.

His impulsive sound bite that it “made my career” to play with the Falcons, stated in Atlanta with an Atlanta audience in mind in the emotional afterglow of being elected to the Hall of Fame there on Feb. 2, needn’t make him dead to Chiefs fans … as has become trendy to say one way or another on social media and likely beyond in some circles.

Seems like it should count that around the same time that day Gonzalez said, “The KC Chiefs, the fans out there. I hope they’re proud because we’re proud. We’re proud to be Chiefs.”

And that he cared enough about how it was taken that he promptly tweeted out a video calling Kansas City fans second to none and writing that he “wouldn’t be here without you.”

A cynic might call that “walking it back,” but I remember feeling funny about it all at the time. But a more measured view would be that he thought it was important to try to clarify or atone. Don’t we all blurt out things we might regret?

Resent him if you want, of course, but it’s a waste of energy and what’s the point?

Maybe the simple truth is that, sure, he wishes he’d chosen his words “a little bit better” in February. But he doesn’t think either city is “better or worse” than the other. They each stand for two different places and stages of his life that had profound impacts on him.

One certainly doesn’t erase the other or mean that he means this any less: “I love Kansas City; I became a man in Kansas City; I grew up in Kansas City,” he said Wednesday. “I mean, I was there for 12 years. That’s a long time. A whole career worth. More than a career.”

Maybe it would be different if Gonzalez really did pick a side … and decided on the wrong one. (Sorry, Atlanta.)

But let’s remember that he doesn’t get to (or have to, as the case may be) choose an official affiliation for this.