In the world of professional sports, loyalty is currency. Athletes are expected to champion their home city, to bleed its colors, and to publicly support their counterparts across other leagues. This is what makes the recent declaration from Indiana Fever’s Sophie Cunningham so jarring. In a move that has stunned the Indianapolis faithful, the WNBA star and teammate of the iconic Caitlin Clark has publicly snubbed the city’s red-hot NFL team, predicting that the Indianapolis Colts will not be hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

Instead, her pick is for the reigning dynasty: Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and the Kansas City Chiefs.

The bombshell prediction was dropped on a recent episode of her podcast, “Show Me Something,” which she co-hosts with West Wilson. When pressed by a listener about her Super Bowl favorites, Cunningham didn’t hesitate. While Wilson backed the pick by citing the Chiefs’ staggering dominance—reaching the Super Bowl in five of the last six seasons—Cunningham’s reasoning cut much closer to home, and it was far more ominous.

It wasn’t about stats. It was about survival.

“I don’t know what’s going on in freaking Indie,” Cunningham stated, her voice laced with genuine concern. “But like, the injury bug is high and heavy over there. So hopefully the Colts stay away. Hopefully, it’s just the basketball world.”

This isn’t just a casual observation from a distanced athlete. This is a warning from a player who has been on the front lines of what she and her teammates have dubbed a “season from hell.” For Cunningham, the “Indiana injury bug” is not a metaphor; it’s a devastating reality that ended her own season and ripped her team apart.

In August 2025, Cunningham’s fiery first season with the Fever—where she averaged 8.6 points and 3.5 rebounds and quickly became a fan favorite—came to an abrupt and painful end. During a game against the Connecticut Sun, a brutal collision with opponent Bria Hartley left Cunningham with a torn MCL in her right knee. It was a season-ending blow, and one that her family and many fans publicly attributed to the WNBA’s inconsistent officiating and failure to protect its players.

But Cunningham wasn’t the only casualty. Her warning to the Colts comes from a place of deep, personal trauma, having watched her locker room turn into a revolving-door infirmary. The Fever’s 2025 campaign was decimated by the “bug.” Generational talent Caitlin Clark was sidelined with a recurring groin issue. Key guards Aari McDonald and Sydney Colson also saw their seasons cut short by significant injuries.

On her podcast, Cunningham described the harrowing experience: “This was a season from hell, too, because of the injury bug. But through it all, I’m grateful… people don’t even go through the amount of adversity and everything that happened to us in a career, let alone one season.”

Her fear, it seems, is contagious. She explicitly noted that the curse wasn’t contained to the WNBA. The city’s NBA franchise, the Indiana Pacers, also felt the sting, losing time from stars like Tyrese Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, and T.J. McConnell. To Cunningham, it looks less like a string of bad luck and more like a pervasive plague on Indiana sports. Her snub of the 8-2 Colts is less an insult and more a plea: don’t let it happen to you, too.

While the injury curse provides a dark and compelling motive for her prediction, there is another, simpler truth at play: Sophie Cunningham’s heart may belong to Indiana on the court, but her football loyalties were forged in Missouri.

Born in Columbia, Missouri, Cunningham was a hometown hero for the Missouri Tigers long before she came to the WNBA. Her allegiance to the Kansas City Chiefs is a lifelong affair, a deeply embedded hometown loyalty that even a new jersey can’t overwrite.

This creates a fascinating and star-studded dynamic within the Indiana Fever locker room. Cunningham isn’t the only one cheering for the Chiefs. Her teammate, Caitlin Clark, is famously a “diehard Chiefs fan.” Clark’s fandom has been well-documented, from her guest appearance on Travis Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast to her highly publicized appearance in a VIP suite alongside Taylor Swift during a Chiefs playoff run.

The shared allegiance has even become a locker-room joke. Cunningham recently made headlines by publicly calling on Clark to “use her connections” to convince Kelce and Swift to attend a Fever game during the 2026 season. “You are asking the wrong girl,” Cunningham quipped. “You have to get Caitlin out here asking those questions because we would love to have Kelce and Swift at a Fever game.”

This complex web of loyalties—to her current city, her hometown team, and her superstar teammate—paints a vivid picture of the modern athlete. But to understand Sophie Cunningham’s unfiltered prediction, one must also understand her role on the Fever. She isn’t just another player; she is the team’s “enforcer.”

Throughout the 2025 season, Cunningham earned the fierce respect of Fever fans for her aggressive, protective stance over Caitlin Clark, who faced unprecedented physicality from opponents. Cunningham was the one who would step in, draw the technical, and send a clear message. Her persona is one of toughness, loyalty, and a fierce, unfiltered honesty.

This outspoken nature extends off the court and onto her podcast, where she has been an unflinching critic of WNBA leadership and officiating. Her prediction, therefore, is perfectly in character. It’s bold, direct, and unapologetically rooted in her own lived experience.

Adding yet another layer of emotional weight to her words is her own precarious professional future. Cunningham’s statement comes at a time of profound personal uncertainty. She was on a one-year deal with the Fever, and with the WNBA and its players’ association currently in stalled negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), a league-wide lockout looms.

“If we can get this new CBA worked out, who knows?” Cunningham confessed in a moment of vulnerability. “Like, no one’s under contract. This could be my last time in an Indiana Fever jersey.”

Her Super Bowl prediction, then, is far more than a simple sports take. It’s the complex, layered declaration of an athlete at a crossroads. It’s a statement born from the trauma of a “season from hell,” a protective warning to her new home, an expression of lifelong loyalty to her old one, and a fascinating peek into the celebrity-fueled dynamics of a WNBA locker room on the rise.

As the Colts prepare for a major upcoming showdown against Cunningham’s favored Chiefs on November 23rd, her words will surely echo in the minds of Indiana fans. They’ve been warned—not by a pundit, but by one of their own stars, a battle-tested “enforcer” who has seen the “injury bug” up close and is praying it doesn’t find a new home at Lucas Oil Stadium.