Pats and Chiefs-A Football Memoir

    I will start with a simple statement. I grew up in New England, and never left until I was eighteen. I never was a Patriots fan. I won $200.00 as a young smart ass because I knew that the Chiefs were better than the Vikings in Super Bowl IV. Although at the time I was a Cowboys fan, I thought the Chiefs were cool, from their beautifully manicured Municipal Stadium field, to their uniforms, to their style of play. I also admired how progressive they were. They basically became a great franchise in part due to embracing African-American talent to a much greater extent than their counterparts.

     So, this AFC championship game is a very cool one for me. While I was not a Patriots fan in my youth, they were certainly part of my history growing up. My large family are all Patriots fans, so I certainly keep a close eye on them, and am happy for my family members when they enjoy their ridiculous amount of successes. I also feel so good right now for Chiefs fans, who have endured so much, and stayed loyal along the way. Last weeks purging win over the Colts has even the most cavalier fan talking Chiefs wherever you go, from the gas station to the grocery store to the tavern.

     Growing up in suburban Boston, my first favorite football team was the New York Giants. That may sound weird, but the Giants were the NFL team that was shown on television each Sunday in New England, and in the mid 1960’s NFL football was REAL pro football. The Patriots and AFL football were a nice addition, but still hadn’t proved their mettle to fans, a fact that would make me some money later in the decade.

     My first vivid sports memory was of the 1963 NFL championship game. A very little boy sat alone and watched on a black and white television as his Giants lost 14-10 at Wrigley Field in a cro magnon affair in temperatures around ten degrees. While the weather will be similar in Kansas City Sunday, I am going to guess that the teams will combine for a shade more than the 490 yards combined the Bears and Giants put up that day. Hell, somebody might top that themselves.

     About this time, my father began having success in his television career, and it provided me with lots of opportunities. I actually have attended Patriots games in six different home venues. My first brush with celebrity (except, of course, being around my Dad, and that doesn’t count) came in a story I told in my book “Leaving Cancer for the Circus”, an encounter with the leading national sports announce of the time Curt Gowdy, and a big (literally) AFL Star….

      “But the only time I actually met Curt Gowdy, he was naked

… pause… pause …

My dad had taken me and my brother Jim to a Boston

Patriots game at Fenway Park. The Patriots somewhat reflected

the early vagabond nature of the AFL. The Pats played everywhere,

Fenway, Harvard Stadium, Boston University Field (the

old home of baseball’s Boston Braves), and Boston College’s

Alumni Stadium. After the game at Fenway, we had the chance

to go into the Patriots locker room.

Gowdy had done the game on national TV and must have had

somewhere important to go, since he was availing himself of the

team’s showers. My brother and I, extra tiny in this setting, stood

there with my dad, awe-struck at the site of these gigantic behemoth

football players strolling about undressed after the game.

My dad knew Gowdy, and when he came out of the showers, my father

(who is no shrinking violet) bellowed at him to come

over and meet his boys. Over came the iconic broadcaster, and he

politely greeted us and shook our hands … with no clothes on.

Alrighty then.

We subsequently met Jim Nance (not Nantz, the broadcaster,

but the All-AFL running back). He was a huge barrel of

a man, and the first African-American person I had met personally.

He was as nice as he was gigantic, and he had also just

departed the shower. You don’t really forget something like

that.”

    My dalliance with the Giants was brief. All it took was one look at the flashy Dallas Cowboys, with their cool uniforms and Olympic Gold medal winning sprinter Bob Hayes playing wide receiver and helping to fuel their innovative offense, to make me a fan. Here comes another bit of a connection with Kansas City, although of course I didn’t know it. The Cowboys I started rooting for at the outset had a Chiefs-like post season history. They lost five straight years, capped by the hideous Super Bowl V mess against the Colts. The last three big game losses were as solid favorites. They were roundly viewed as chokers.

     It took me pretending to be sick to avoid a trip to Grandma’s house (no TV there), so I could watch and root for the Cowboys to bag their first Super Bowl win in Super Bowl VI. From that point on the Cowboys had their frustrations in the post season, but they won a lot, too. Maybe that will become the Chiefs narrative.

     But even as I watched football from an NFL focus, I was well aware that the AFL was making great strides. But many others, even supposedly learned football observers, were not catching on. Even after the Jets, as an eighteen-point underdog, upset the Colts in Super III, respect really wasn’t there. The Chiefs were still a two-touchdown underdog the next year as they got set to play the Vikings.

     I paid close attention to the Chiefs. As I mentioned at the outset, I liked them. They were innovative, they were cool, and they had superb athletes all over the field. To my preteen “expert” eyes it was absurd that the Vikings, with their chicken wing QB Joe Kapp, plow horse running backs, and slow-footed secondary were the easy choice of the pundits.

     I was actually a pipsqueak bookie, although my Dad had shut my little operation (which was quite successful) down late that season. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t sneak in my own action. I made 10 little wagers totaling fifty dollars against the spread. Then when one loudmouth spouted off that he would offer up 10-1 for a Chiefs win. I went in for $15.00 which I know he thought was free money, but I was pretty darn sure that was a good bet. I was right, easily. He owed me 150 bucks in 1970 money. Despite using a big friend as a threat, he never paid, his mother eventually begging me over the phone to let him off the hook.

     This all led to a hilarious incident at my 15th high school reunion. This fellow had gone on to West Point and by that time was in politics in the Chicago area. We had been golf teammates, but not really friends. We were chatting, and I told the story about how he never paid up his youthful bet. It was all in good fun. Then he looked right at my first wife and told her that one day after practice he and his parents took me to dinner at the Country Club and we squared it all up.

     I didn’t say anything, and my wife and I walked a few steps away before I informed her that he had made the whole thing up. He actually had the chutzpah to say it right in front of me. A politician standing there and boldly stating a complete and utter falsehood. Well, not unique. In fact, I think he may have actually believed his own tale.

     I don’t really know how it happened, maybe coach Tom Landry hanging it up, or the Cowboys being bad enough to have the number one pick, who knows, but as the years went by, by the time of the Triplets , and their muItiple titles, I really wasn’t a Cowboys fan anymore. I just watched, covered, and enjoyed the overall NFL game analytically, not emotionally.

     That continues to this day. You don’t really pick up a new favorite team when you are a reporter in your late thirties. I don’t bet on football either, anymore, really that Super Bowl was pretty much my swan song. I think that actually is good for analyzing the games. But it’s not as much fun as being a Chiefs fan or a Patriots fan this week.

     In particular, Chiefs fans. A loss this week, for the Patriots and their supporters, isn’t going to take away five Super Bowl titles in less than twenty years. But, this is new love for Chiefs diehards and newbies. They can clearly envision a run of a similar fashion with a generational quarterback. So, after the monkey was flung off their backs with the home win over the Colts last week, they can just embrace this opportunity with glee.

     Just a couple of years removed from the unbelievable galvanizing of the city around the Royals, it is happening again here in Kansas City. Most of the eyes of the community will be glued to the Patriots versus the Chiefs this week.

     So will mine, viewing two franchises inextricably entwined in my life, even though they weren’t my first football loves, or in fact did we ever date.