(Part 3)
Past Disconsolations and Future Deconstructions of a Kansas City Chiefs Fan

So the Chiefs have a new boss. Scott Pioli. I know almost nothing about him. What I do know about him I know only because my sports radar picks things up from news, random comments from people, those things. Apparently he came from New England, and he was sought after by a number of teams, including the Browns I think.

But that’s it. I don’t know a lick of information about him other than that.

The reason for my blissful ignorance is because of what I’d committed to doing after that fateful Monday night game against Denver. The day after that game…

November 17, 1998.

That was it. That’s the date.

On that day I firmly decided to completely abandon all my attention to any and every major sports thing there was. No more watching or listening to games. No more reading about them in the newspaper. No more gazing at televised replays and accompanying commentary about that touchdown or that homerun. No more starting conversations with others about this or that piddly little sports thing just to see if what they said would give me a teench more confidence about my team’s imminent prospects.

This newly professed sports celibacy was certainly a challenge, but for just over ten years now I’ve done pretty well. It has indeed been rewarding to put away all the fits of rage when my team didn’t do what I think it should have done, all the petty jealousies when some other guy got the trophy, all the selfish ambitions that made me revile other people I don’t even know. And all this from a guy who has never bet a dime on a sporting event.

Yes I’ve gone off the wagon a few times. I have peeked at championship games a couple times—I confess I did enjoy watching KU’s Jayhawks get that clutch NCAA basketball title against Memphis this past year. And I haven’t become a complete sports recluse—if someone else wants to engage me about sports items I’m not going to ferociously shun them from my presence. If my son continues his fine play in organized baseball I’m not going to smugly refuse to follow his progress—in fact I’ve recently softened a bit of my baseball celibacy to join him and do the dad-son thing in cheering on the Angels, a team he has become quite fond of.

I am, however, still firmly committed to staying true because it does help me focus a bit more on what’s important. Not that rooting for my team isn’t, and this is why in 2003 I decided to allow myself one simple sports indulgence. Yes, you know what it was:

Follow my Kansas City Chiefs once again.

I picked a fine year to do it. We started 9-0 that year, with Trent Green slinging the ball beautifully and Dante Hall zipping in and out of special teams coverages for eye-popping scores. It was fun. While the years following haven’t been as spectacular, I’ve actually enjoyed doing precisely what I committed to do, and that is to just watch the games.

Still, no newspapers, no web-surfing for every Chiefs nibble, no nothing except tuning in each Sunday from 12 noon to 3 central. Yes, I know during those three hours I can’t help but absorb all manner of Chiefs information from the marvelous to the abominable, but, whatever.

In the middle of the 2005 season I started to make this Chiefs thing more vibrant by starting a blog with this novel perspective as its theme. All I would do is comment on what I got from those three hours. Nothing else would color my commentary, even though I do admit some of it will contain that static I pick up with my sports radar—it’s just impossible to shut that damn thing off. I do also allow myself to research events and information from previous years, which is why I can include some historical context.

So now we’re back to the present and our brand-spankin’ new GM Scott Pioli of whom I know little and respectfully hope to keep that way (I think I did know far too much about Carl Peterson).

This whole dynamic relates to why I go to great lengths now to avoid all the static. If I scour the web and find every thing about Pioli there is to know, I’ll discover one of two things, or both. Before I get to those things you must know this.

I once also followed the 49ers like a madman, since I spent much of my upbringing in the Bay Area. I don’t think you can get two opposite ends of the GM spectrum as you can between Joe Thomas, who in 1978 practically destroyed the team, and his successor Bill Walsh, who is canonized for almost single-handedly reinventing the passing game, possessing one of the most phenomenal eyes for talent the league has ever seen, and making the Niners the most dominant team in the NFL for years and years.

So I could look at Pioli and (1) see traces of Joe Thomas—even if there are none but I’m just obsessively looking for them—which will only depress me. Or I could look at him and (2) see traces of Bill Walsh, at which point my elation will be so high that when Pioli doesn’t win us the next 57 straight Super Bowls all I can feel is, yes, depression.

Oh, so then nothing but depression results from my completely uncharitable voyeurism of this fine new football executive we have? Therefore, what’s the point.

My concern goes much deeper, and it has to do with some things I’d been thinking about for some time. They are ruminations much more far-reaching than whatever it is our new GM can do for my beloved pro football team in Kansas City, and I want to share them here in this blog.

But that is for next time. For now, here is a trivia question, some chewing tobaccee for your mind: Which city with a major league team and an NFL team (there are 24 of them in the U.S.) has the second longest drought without a playoff appearance by the baseball team and a playoff win by the football team? Answer: The second (note: the second) longest drought is Cincinnati at a combined 31 years, the Reds having last been in the National League playoffs in 1995 and the Bengals last earning an NFL postseason win in 1990. The third longest is 21 years, by the way (Dallas, if you can believe it--the Cowboys haven't won a playoff game since 1996).

Now, ahem, can you possibly guess which city has the longest drought? And do you know how long that has been? Hint: the Harry S. Truman Sports Complex is a quite barren place in October and January.

(Part 4 is next. We've done the past as pretext for the future, now for those deconstructions...)
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