Do you remember the 2011 story of a mountain lion roaming around the Chiefs practice facility?
My memory isn’t as good as it used to be but I’m pretty sure I don’t ever remember finding out that this story was actually a hoax.
The one who set it all up is Chiefs kicker Ryan Succop, who is not with the Titans. He told the story in this video with the Titans and that it was all something they made up.
“I love to hunt,” Succop said. “I had a trail cam set up outside of our practice facility when I was in Kansas City with the Chiefs. We had some great pictures. We had pictures of deer, we had pictures of coyotes, turkey and maybe the neighbors cat now and again.
“One of the nights before one of our games, one of my teammates had asked me if I had seen anything else. A buddy had just texted me a picture of a mountain lion that had a deer by the throat. It was not from our trail cam. This was from somewhere down in Texas. He asked if we had anything else on our trail cam and I said matter of fact I have. I pulled out this picture on my phone of a mountain lion. Sure enough, that kinda spread like wildfire. That’s all I had to do.
“For about three weeks, all of our guys quit parking in the parking lot where the tree line was. They parked as close as they could to the door. I sat and watched them every morning get out of their car and sprint to the facility because they were so worried there was a mountain lion was going to attack them. That was hilarious. It was actually on the NFL’s website because people thought it was legit. It got out into the media. You can look it up. Google it if you’e ever bored.”
I definitely remember the mountain lion story but I do not remember finding out it was a hoax. This post on the Chiefs website two years ago mentions it and says the Missouri Department of Wildlife actually came out. This really was covered by a lot of outlets including, as Succop said, the NFL’s website.
Good one.