Magazine cover model and Jackson Mahomes’ ally: Gracie Hunt takes Super Bowl by storm

The Kansas City Chiefs’ MVP — Most Valuable Personality — at the Super Bowl this week is the young woman with the sexy pout and tousled blond hair on the new cover of Maxim men’s magazine.

She’s studying sport management at the University of Kansas and suggested to Maxim that she might want to be football commissioner some day. If media and public attention score job points, commissioner Roger Goodell better be looking over his shoulder.

Gracie Hunt has become a force.

She rolled into Phoenix like a tsunami. The daughter of Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt is grabbing national headlines as a football “heiress” like she never has before, thanks to interviews with Fox News — Fox is airing the game Sunday — but mostly because of a sexy photo spread and lengthy profile in Maxim that debuted Thursday.

She’s name-checked in headlines in The New York Post, Toronto Sun, sports blogs and even the British national tabloid The Mirror that played up a snippet from her Maxim interview: “Kansas City Chiefs heiress reveals three attributes you need to be her boyfriend.”

Hunt herself, who is said to be 24, is giving a pictorial play-by-play of the week on her Instagram account, where 242,000 people follow her posts about health and wellness, physical fitness, the Chiefs, family vacations and fashion. On Twitter she has 31,000 followers and goes by @gracelynhunt.

All this attention follows a minor quake she set off in late January when she posted a photo of herself in a snow-covered field wearing a red bikini with the Chiefs logo over the left breast. The photo earned more than 31,000 Instagram likes.

After that, The Sporting News ran a story under the headline: “Who is the Chiefs owner’s daughter? Meet Gracie Hunt, social media star and Miss Kansas USA 2021.”

She was crowned Miss Kansas in April 2021 and finished in the top 16 at the Miss USA pageant later that year.

Her posts from Phoenix have been mostly about fashion so far. Hunt has been an ambassador for NFL clothing for years. No doubt many Chiefs fans have seen her Instagram-perfect entrances onto the sidelines before home games, wearing one stylish outfit after another, often in stilettos.

“From the time I was a baby toddling around, I was dressed in red and gold and grew up on those sidelines,” she told Maxim.

Not surprisingly, she’s representing in red at the Super Bowl. At Thursday’s NFL Honors ceremony she posed on the red carpet, hand on hip like a model, in a body-hugging red dress that scored a like from Jackson Mahomes, quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ brother.

The New York Post turned part of her recent interview with Fox News Digital into this headline: “Gracie Hunt, daughter of Chiefs owner, comes to the defense of controversial Jackson Mahomes.”

That’s a reference to how last season, Jackson took heat for his behavior on the sidelines and at games. He was mostly MIA this season, but Fox News wanted Gracie to comment on the past.

“I think Patrick Mahomes has a wonderful family — from Brittany to Jackson,” Hunt said, mentioning Mahomes’ wife. “They are wonderful people and we are so blessed to have them as part of our organization and are huge rocks in Patrick’s life.

“I do think that we live in a culture that’s often quick to criticize and slow to forgive. But I think we need to be one that’s quick to forgive and slow to criticize.”

The Maxim story fills in many blanks about Hunt’s life in a lengthy profile that at the start defines her as “the girl who has it all.” She is granddaughter of Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt, and great-granddaughter of oil tycoon H.L. Hunt,

Hunt, who has degrees in journalism, applied psychology and sport management from Southern Methodist University, works with the Chiefs on brand development and marketing, according to Maxim.

She volunteers for several causes — one assists victims of human trafficking — sits on the board of Special Olympics Kansas and runs her own nonprofit, Breaking Barriers Through Sports.

No surprise, sports are big in the Hunt family. She told how she played soccer when she was young, which helped build her relationship with her father. She planned to play in college but four sports-related concussions ruined that dream.

When soccer fell through she turned to a different kind of training, following her mother’s path into the world of pageants. Both have been Miss Kansas USA. Instagram posts show her running marathons now.

Of course the lad mag asked about her dating life.

“I’m definitely looking for that number one draft pick,” she said, specifying what that hunt entails.

“My top three things: does he align with me on a faith basis? Is he athletic? What does his work ethic look like? And if you’re funny with a great personality that’s hard to beat,” she said.

Hunt said she will be at the NFL Draft in Kansas City in April and laid out a firsthand account of how the Chiefs make their choices inside a “war room.”

“You hear about the war room and there really is a war room,” she said. “Our team’s scouts and coaches work hard to run all the different scenarios so that it takes as much pressure as possible off that moment when you’re on the clock. It’s almost like a game of chess. Identifying talent that other teams might grade differently is essential to a successful draft.”

After sharing that level of insider intel, Maxim put Goodell on alert: Gracie Hunt is coming for you.

“There’s got to be a first female NFL commissioner at some point,” she said.