No, the NFL isn’t rigged in the Chiefs’ favor. Sorry if that bores you.

.

.

.

Kansas City doesn’t really get all the calls, but opposing fans and now some media members are seeing everything as suspicious.

.

.

NEW ORLEANS — You know who’s more annoying than the Kansas City Chiefs? The green-eyed lunatics who can’t control their annoyance with the Chiefs’ success.

They’re a reckless bunch, more so than any dynasty-fatigued variant in sports history.

There always has been a two-title limit to the average fan’s patience.

After that, any glory hog is destined to be villainized because the followers of competing teams get tired of having to share warm beer.

It’s a respect thing, the envy that comes across as hatred when greatness can’t be extinguished.

Champions use the whining to decorate the gaps in their trophy cases.

But the Kansas City hate is swerving into a disturbing kind of psychosis.

An inescapable faction within the annoyed really thinks the NFL is rigged for the Chiefs.

What started as a joke last season has bloated into a bizarre movement.

The conspiracy theory has advanced from silly “boycott the NFL” social media proclamations to a “news” story with legs.

If you figured such irrational thought was reserved only for consequential things such as elections, well, sorry.

The brain rot is coming for our trivial diversions, too.

Kansas City went a half-century between Super Bowls until its championship resurrection in 2020.

Now, the Chiefs have won three of the past five.

On Sunday, they will be featured in their fifth Super Bowl in six seasons.

They have a chance to win their fourth championship with the duo of quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Coach Andy Reid.

They also are pursuing history, aiming to become the first franchise to win three straight Super Bowls.

They are exhaustingly great, with a roster that has transformed multiple times beneath a handful of core players and still preserved excellence.

They don’t dominate the league anymore; they outlast it.

They operate with a surgeon’s skill, taking apart the competition one tiny incision at a time, deftly maneuvering through small margins of victory.

They’ve become the giant that eclipses the NFL’s parity-based system.

So they must be cheating.

Or rather, a whole network of devious people must be in cahoots to make sure they win.

Because Roger Goodell, the commissioner of a megabillion-dollar enterprise that became so powerful because of competitive balance, suddenly thinks the league must draft off a single team’s relevance.

Because Kansas City, among the smallest of the NFL’s markets, needs preferential treatment to drive profits for every city.

Because Mahomes, the froggy-voiced dad bod king, must reign in a sport that markets its shield over individuals.

Because Taylor Swift rules the world, and the NFL is panting about a small percentage of its viewers being Swifties eager to see two-second glimpses of their favorite music artist cheering for her boyfriend, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

Because, most of all, people hate officials more than they hate spinach and face masks, and therefore, every bad officiating call must have an ulterior motive.

“So, who is your favorite ref?” a reporter asked Mahomes earlier this week.

“That’s hilarious,” Mahomes said, trying to be cool about it.

Then came the follow-up: “Is there one you give a Christmas card to, possibly?”

It’s good fun when the annoyed turn their Kansas City resentment into humor.

For instance, I love the manipulated photo of Mahomes and an official swapping jerseys after the game.

Needling makes for great entertainment.

But it turns dangerous when attention-seekers take the conversation too far, forcing logic to capitulate to emotional chicanery.

Does it seem like the Chiefs come out on the positive side of a disproportionate number of debatable calls in high-profile games? Yes, it does.

But do the Chiefs play a disproportionate number of high-profile games? Absolutely, they do.

.

.

To examine whether the Chiefs receive extraordinary favoritism, you would need to review the important plays of every team, chart them and determine whether there’s a pattern.

It’s the only way to get past our attention bias.

We don’t pay attention to every game.

Most of us don’t pay close attention to 10 percent of them.

Yet we’re prepared to make sweeping claims about fraudulent results based on nothing more than what it feels like.

And then certain media members, who now can spy on watercooler discussion on social media, legitimize a feeling so much that it starts to resemble a fact.

The next thing you know, everyone from Goodell to the referee union to the Chiefs’ stars are forced to respond to rumors of an absurd plot.

Their denials become news, and in a society in which everyone is free to misrepresent the truth or believe a lie, the preposterous acquires unchecked power.

“Officiating crews do not work the same team more than twice each regular season,” NFL Referees Association executive director Scott Green said in a statement.

“It is insulting and preposterous to hear conspiracy theories that somehow 17 officiating crews consisting of 138 officials are colluding to assist one team.”