The Cruel, Unfair World of Sports

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chiefs, falcons, georgia bulldogs, Missouri tigers, patriots, royals, Stephen Roth, super bowl LI, tar heels

Sunday’s epic Super Bowl collapse by the Atlanta Falcons, a team I grew up living and mostly dying for, has caused me to question, again, why I even bother to follow sports.

In the 35-plus years I have been a sports fan, my favorite teams have reached the top of their respective heaps exactly seven times. That’s a pretty bad winning percentage when you consider my rooting interests include two major cities and four college programs. If I were only a fan of, say, the New England Patriots, I’d have nine Super Bowl appearances and five championships to look back fondly upon. If I only liked Boston sports, I’d have an additional three World Series champions and four NBA titles to brag about.

Life’s not that easy for most of us–in both sports and the world in general. Though never much of an athlete, I’ve been a sports fan since the age of 11. Like most fans, I’ve weathered a lot of misery over the years.

Outlined below are the teams I have followed, which I am chronicling more for therapeutic purposes than for your entertainment. Maybe this list will remind you of some of the heartbreak you’ve endured with your own favorite teams, the moments where you’ve sworn you are never going to watch another game? Or maybe you’re a Tom Brady or Duke basketball fan, and are therefore unfamiliar with emotional pain?

At any rate, here are the teams, in no particular order, that have methodically sucked some of the joy out of my life. Read about them if you dare:

Georgia Bulldogs

There was a time when I spent most of my waking hours thinking about University of Georgia football. They were my first sports love, starting with those great Herschel Walker teams of the early 1980s.

Unfortunately, the Dawgs haven’t returned to those glorious times since. With money, tradition, great facilities and access to a bounty of high school football talent, Georgia football is one of those college programs that should be great, but seldom is. The Dawgs have won only two Southeastern Conference championships since Herschel left school in early 1983. Since that time, just about every major college within driving distance of Athens, Ga., has won at least one national football title. Georgia fans must harken back to 1980 for the only time their team finished a consensus #1. Even then, it required having the greatest player in the history of college football to get them there.

Georgia still produces some very good teams, and they have a promising new coach in Kirby Smart. Maybe 2017 will finally be “The Year” that fans like me have desperately craved?

Atlanta Sports Teams

The Atlanta Braves won the World Series in 1995, one of my all-time favorite sports moments. Even that accomplishment is tinged with disappointment, as the Braves won 14 straight division titles and only won the championship once during that time. Their one World Series triumph came against Cleveland, so does that even count?

The Atlanta Hawks and Falcons have had their occasional shots at glory. The Falcons have a tradition of following up each good season with a terrible one. The gut-punch they suffered from the Patriots on Sunday night could set the franchise reeling for the next few years, if history is any indication.

Missouri Tigers

I could write a book—and have written a few blog posts—about the agonies of being a fan of “Ol’ Misery.” Truth is, following my alma mater hasn’t been all that bad. The Tigers have had several good football and basketball teams over the years. They’ve just never clawed their way to the top.

A lot of Mizzou fans like to drone on and on about how the program is cursed, as the Tigers have suffered more than their share of soul-crushing losses in football and hoops. However, Missouri athletics also raises far less money than the powerhouse programs in college sports, so dashed dreams seem to be built into the formula. The Tigers will have good teams again (they’re currently dreadful in both basketball and football), but championships are not very likely.

Kansas City Royals

They may never get credit for it, but the Royals pulled off one of the greatest miracles in baseball history by reaching the World Series in 2014 and 2015, and winning it all the second time around. The Royals are a small-market franchise with a limited payroll. Somehow, after decades of failure, they developed a home-grown team with incredible chemistry that came within one game of winning two straight world championships. The Chicago Cubs are America’s darlings for their 2016 title, but they spent a ton of money to get there. The Royals did it the hard way.

You need to have endured the 29-year run of mostly horrible Royals baseball to appreciate how far the franchise has climbed. The Royals’ success in 2014-2015 made all that suffering worthwhile with a rare sports moment in which the underdogs finally came out on top.

Kansas City Chiefs 

Atlanta Falcons fans should be glad they don’t live in the football purgatory the Chiefs have inhabited for decades. The Hunt family, who have owned the team from its beginning, keep following the same risk-adverse formula: draft defenders, offensive linemen and the occasional running back, then sign a free-agent quarterback who lost his starting job at one of the elite franchises (49ers, Patriots). This approach has earned the Chiefs a few playoff appearances, but little more. The team has won exactly four playoff games since winning the Super Bowl in January 1970.

This spring, the Chiefs could trade up in the draft to get Clemson’s all-around superstar QB Deshaun Watson in the first round. I can’t wait to see which nose guard they decide to draft instead.

Army Football

My dad went to West Point, so I have always cared about the fortunes of Army (or, as Lou Holtz once stupidly called it, “The University of The Army”). All too often, the football Cadets have been bad–very, very bad. But, hey, they finally beat Navy last year and went to a bowl game, so hope springs eternal.

North Carolina Tar Heels

This is the one time I got it right in selecting a favorite team to follow. My mother’s family are all Tar Heels, and thank God for that. Carolina basketball won national titles in 1982, 1993, 2005 and 2009, and has appeared in many Final Fours. I only wish I liked Roy Williams just a little bit better. I’ve always thought he was a bit of a fraud.

Those are my sports fan misadventures, most of them grim. How about you? Do you have any teams you can’t help but pull for, though a little part of you dies each time they let you down?

Reconsidering Coach K

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acc, basketball, dean smith, feinstein, krzyzewski, the legends club, valvano

When former N.C. State basketball coach Jim Valvano—the legendary and lovable “Jimmy V”—was undergoing cancer treatments at Duke University Hospital in early 1993, he formed an unexpected friendship.

Nearly every day, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski would walk from his team’s practices at Cameron Indoor Stadium to the hospital, where he would spend an hour or so with his one-time rival. The two coaches talked some basketball, but they mostly talked about life. They laughed and cried. Every day, when Krzyzewski walked into the hospital room, Valvano’s eyes would light up.

“What are we, chopped liver?” one of Valvano’s daughters joked outside the room as the two coaches rambled on about some Atlantic Coast Conference basketball game from years past.

Krzyzewski was at Valvano’s bedside shortly before he died. He would later describe those hospital visits with Jimmy V as a life-changing experience. “You and I became brothers during the last four or five months of your life,” Krzyzewski wrote in a postmortem letter to the man he had battled against in several crucial basketball games.

Coach K’s friendship with a dying Valvano is the heart and soul of The Legends Club, a new book by John Feinstein about the three most iconic basketball coaches in ACC history—Krzyzewski, Valvano and North Carolina coach Dean Smith. From 1980 through 1989, the three coaches squared off against each other two and often three times a season. The games between Krzyzewski and Smith continued until 1997, solidifying Duke-North Carolina as the most intense—and publicized—rivalry in college basketball. Many would argue that the 17-year period covered by The Legends Club represents not only the heyday of ACC basketball, but all of college hoops.

When I was growing up in Georgia in the 1980s, ACC basketball was the biggest thing going from January into March every year. I was a North Carolina Tar Heels fan because most of my mother’s family members were Carolina fans. I also liked Georgia Tech due to its proximity and exciting players like Mark Price, Bruce Dalrymple and John Salley. I liked N.C. State and Valvano, who could have easily been a stand-up comedian if he wasn’t such a damn good basketball coach.

I despised Duke. I didn’t like the Cameron Crazies—the smart-ass Duke student section that reveled in its creative ways of rattling opposing players. I detested Coach K with his angry scowl and his tendency to jaw at the refs throughout a 40-minute basketball game. Storming the sidelines in a dark, Richard Nixon-style suit, he seemed petty and mean. As many have pointed out before, Krzyzewski really does look a lot like the team’s pointy-eared Blue Devil mascot, except that at least the mascot is smiling.

The only time I can recall rooting for Duke was during its epic 1991 Final Four upset of UNLV, a team that somehow managed to act more obnoxious and entitled than even the smug brats who always played for Duke.

After reading The Legends Club, I am still not a fan of Duke, but I did come away with a greater appreciation of Krzyzewski. Despite his fiery nature and defensiveness even in the wake of winning five national titles, Coach K has many admirable qualities. The son of Polish immigrants, he rose from working class Chicago to attend West Point and serve in the Army. Three years into his tenure at Duke, he was nearly fired after back-to-back losing seasons. Krzyzewski probably would have been fired if that took place in today’s big-money, win-now sports culture. Instead, he is simply the winningest coach in college basketball history.

What fuels The Legends Club are several entertaining anecdotes about Smith, Valvano and Krzyzewski, their games and their personal interactions. Feinstein, a Duke graduate who covered ACC hoops in the 1980s, knows the territory well. He does a fine job of pushing aside the public images of all three coaches to reveal their humanity. Krzyzewski and Smith, for example, despised each other and had several clashes during heated Carolina-Duke tilts. In the end, however, they developed a mutual respect, if not a friendship.

Ultimately, The Legends Club is a Coach K book—perhaps because he has coached the longest and remains at the top of his profession. If you just can’t separate Krzyzewski from Christian Laettner stomping on a Kentucky player, or Grayson Allen’s many tripping incidents, this might not be the book for you. Or maybe it is? You may be surprised by the old coach’s many layers, beyond the dark-suited Blue Devil you see all the time on TV.

I Do Love the Football

Tags

alabama crimson tide, bear bryant, college football, georgia bulldogs, herschel walker, southern miss, west point lake

For me, Labor Day weekend always means the start of football. Every few years or so, pro football will kick off its regular season on the Sunday before the holiday but, more often than not, Labor Day is exclusively tied to college football. Tomorrow and Sunday will bring an unusually tasty menu of big games between traditional powers: Alabama vs USC, Clemson vs Auburn, Texas vs. Notre Dame. I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.

My love for college football started when I was 11 years old. That was 1982, Herschel Walker’s Heisman Trophy-winning season, so I naturally became a devoted Georgia Bulldogs fan. Nobody told me at the time that the Bulldogs would not return to the Sugar Bowl for another 20 years after that season. Maybe I would have chosen to root for Alabama if I had been able to peer into the future.

As the years passed, my football obsession grew. On Labor Day weekend of 1984, my father and I were invited to go water skiing on a friend’s boat at West Point Lake. I didn’t want to go. It was the start of college football, and I intended to plop myself on the downstairs couch, eat popcorn and watch games all day. I finally agreed to go to the lake after my dad dug up a tiny little transistor radio so that I could listen to the action of the Georgia-Southern Miss game.

The Bulldogs had a young, inexperienced offense that year, and Southern Miss was pretty good. The game was back-and-forth between the two teams. As we rode in the boat, watching my friend glide in and out of our wake on his slalom ski, I held the radio to my ear and sweated out the final minutes of the 26-19 Georgia win. I remember that the Dawgs’ Kevin Butler (who went on the play for the 1985 Chicago Bears) kicked four field goals in that game. I went home that day sunburned and happy.

Looking back, it probably seemed odd that a 13-year-old boy would prefer to listen to a football game on the radio rather than swim, water-ski and wrestle on the lake’s muddy shore with his friend. Even now I have to shake my head at the number of gorgeous fall afternoons I spent indoors watching football games on TV, regardless of whether the action was SEC, Big Ten, ACC or the NFL. At a time when I was crossing that uncomfortable void between boyhood and adolescence, televised football and other sports were something I could count on every weekend. I might be carrying a D-minus average in Algebra, I might be afraid to talk to the girl sitting in front of me in seventh period, but there was always a chance the Georgia would rise up and beat Auburn on Saturday afternoon (they usually didn’t, though).

Football doesn’t mean as much to me now as it did then, but I still enjoy watching the games, even with all the money, corruption and other negative things swirling around big-time athletics. As the great Alabama coach Bear Bryant once growled, “I do love the football.”

Ali, The Poet

Tags

1960s, boxing, muhammad ali, peyton manning, poetry, sports, the greatest, tom brady, writing

I’m not old enough to remember when Muhammad Ali was in his fighting prime, but I’ve always enjoyed watching old film clips and documentaries about him in those days. I especially love the poems he would write and share with the press before big fights. In addition to being the greatest boxer in the world, he was a genius with words and phrases. Ali coined “Rumble in the Jungle,” and “Thrilla In Manila,” the phrases we use to recall two of his most pivotal bouts. Grantland Rice would have been hard-pressed to come up with better catch-phrases than those.

Ali wrote the following poem, “I am the Greatest,” when his name was still Cassius Clay. He was 21 at the time. National Public Radio featured the original audio recording of the poem earlier this week.

Do you know any 21-year-olds who have the self-assurance to read a piece of verse they wrote to a large gathering of strangers? Do they also possess the skill to make the piece boastful, but humorous and playful at the same time? And do they have the charisma to read a poem called “I am the Greatest” without coming across as an arrogant jackass? Finally, how many 21-year-olds do you know who could back up that performance by actually being the greatest at what they do?

It has been written many times that Ali was a one-of-a-kind, and that is true for many reasons. For me, his charisma stands out as something totally unique in the dull, calculated, humorless world of sports. Can you imagine Tom Brady or Peyton Manning sharing poems they wrote before an upcoming Super Bowl?

Here’s the poem. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did:

This is the legend of Cassius Clay,
The most beautiful fighter in the world today.
He talks a great deal, and brags indeed-y,
of a muscular punch that’s incredibly speed-y.
The fistic world was dull and weary,
But with a champ like Liston, things had to be dreary.
Then someone with color and someone with dash,
Brought fight fans a-runnin’ with cash.
This brash young boxer is something to see
And the heavyweight championship is his des-tin-y.
This kid fights great; he’s got speed and endurance,
But if you sign to fight him, increase your insurance.
This kid’s got a left; this kid’s got a right,
If he hit you once, you’re asleep for the night.
And as you lie on the floor while the ref counts ten,
You’ll pray that you won’t have to fight me again.
For I am the man this poem’s about,
The next champ of the world, there isn’t a doubt.
This I predict and I know the score,
I’ll be champ of the world in ’64.
When I say three, they’ll go in the third.

So don’t bet against me, I’m a man of my word.
He is the greatest! Yes!
I am the man this poem’s about,
I’ll be champ of the world, there isn’t a doubt.
Here I predict Mr. Liston’s dismemberment,
I’ll hit him so hard; he’ll wonder where October and November went.
When I say two, there’s never a third,
Standin’ against me is completely absurd.
When Cassius says a mouse can outrun a horse,
Don’t ask how; put your money where your mouse is!
I AM THE GREATEST!”

Your Official Drinking Game for the 2016 Super Bowl

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beyonce, bud bowl, carolina panthers, coldplay, denver broncos, national football league, NFL, peyton manning, roger goodell, Super Bowl

• For each player who has been arrested on the night before the big game, take a drink.

• For each shot of a head coach pacing the sidelines in his officially licensed team gear, headphones and haircut, take a drink.

• For every mention of “The coveted Lombardi Trophy,” take a drink.

• Each time a beer commercial features an adult male getting hurt or humiliated, take a drink.

• When the camera pans in on a pale, grey-haired team owner and his trophy wife peering down at the game from their luxury box, take a drink.

• When the camera shows Roger Goodell in his luxury box, take a drink, take a knee and say a quick prayer thanking your Creator that you have year-round media coverage of the NFL to look forward to for the rest of your life.

• Each time the announcers speculate on whether or not this will be Peyton Manning’s final game, take a drink.

• Take a drink each time Peyton Manning cries out “Omaha!”

• Take a drink each time Peyton Manning throws an interception. Take two drinks if it is a “pick-six.”

• Whenever the color analyst mentions “good penetration,” “red zone,” or “taking it to the hole,” take a drink and exchange a knowing smirk with your significant other.

• For every commercial featuring horses, babies or puppy dogs, take a drink and keep a Kleenex handy to dab the grateful tears from your eyes.

• This year’s halftime entertainment will be Coldplay, Beyonce, and a “special guest.” If that secret performer turns out to be U2, slam the rest of your drink. If it turns out to be Taylor Swift, slam your drink and the drink of the person sitting next to you.

• For every commercial making a “statement” about a Serious National Concern like child obesity or rickets or binge drinking, take a drink and complain about how you don’t need to be reminded of this shit during the Super Bowl.

• Take a drink each time someone in the room reminisces fondly about the Bud Bowl.

• When the celebratory cooler of Gatorade is dumped on the winning head coach, take one drink if the liquid looks orange, and two drinks if it has more of a reddish tint.

• After the game and the locker room interviews and the post-game analysis, take two Advils and maybe take a walk around your neighborhood in the brisk night air. Tomorrow’s a working day, and you’ve got to be up by six in the morning.

The Pain Factory that is Mizzou Basketball

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author, frank haith, kim anderson, mike alden, missouri, missouri basketball, mizzou, norm stewart, quin snyder, Stephen Roth, tigers

Something sad is happening this winter in Columbia, Missouri.

University of Missouri basketball has never been great, but it is usually pretty good. Most seasons, the Tigers will knock off a couple of highly ranked teams and contend for a berth in the NCAA Tournament.

Kim Anderson doesn’t have much to smile about these days.

This year, Mizzou basketball is terrible. The Tigers stand 7-20, having lost 13 straight games in the mediocre Southeastern Conference. Some of those losses have been heartbreakers, but most of them have been by double-digits. The team has looked overmatched against mighty Kentucky, and overmatched against less-than-mighty Alabama, Vanderbilt, and Mississippi State. The only suspense left to this season–Missouri’s worst in almost 50 years–is whether or not the Tigers will manage to chalk up another win. That scenario is starting to seem more and more like a childish fantasy.

This is the first season for Tigers coach Kim Anderson, a former Mizzou big man from the 1970s whose first game leading the team in Columbia was a humiliating 69-61 loss to a directional school, the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Everyone expected 2014-15 to be a tough season for Anderson. Previous coach Frank Haith left very few experienced players before bolting for the Tulsa job last April. Still, the roster has a few freshmen and sophomores who were top-50 recruits. There was reason to expect a young, energetic, competitive team.

That hasn’t happened. Some games, the Tigers play hard but make a ton of mistakes. Other games, they seem lethargic and make even more mistakes. Anderson has benched players and suspended players. He has lectured them about sitting up straight and looking people in the eye during post-game press conferences. He has talked about gutting the program in order to build it back up. Hopefully, these tactics will work, but it will take some time. Most people expect some players to transfer out of the program at season’s end. Next season could be just as bad as this one.

For long-time fans of Tigers basketball, it is just another chapter in a long story that even a Russian novelist would find too depressing to believe. When Missouri fans complain about the pain and anguish of being Missouri fans, they are mostly talking about hoops. Mizzou football has had a couple of famously devastating defeats, but the gridiron Tigers have been reliably good for more than 10 years. Tiger basketball, meanwhile, has been as volatile as a tech start-up’s stock price on the NASDAQ.

Norm Stewart’s teams were good, but not great.

I don’t want to bore you with too many details, but here’s what has basically happened with Mizzou basketball over the past 15 or so years:

1999

Athletic Director Mike Alden mishandles the firing of legendary Tigers coach Norm Stewart. Missouri hires Duke assistant and all-around pretty boy Quin Snyder.

2000-2003

Snyder takes the Tigers to four straight NCAA Tournament appearances, including an Elite Eight run in 2002.

2003

The arrest of point guard Ricky Clemons and subsequent jailhouse tapes of him divulging some dirty laundry eventually lands the Tigers on probation for a couple of years. The program goes into decline.

2004

Missouri’s new basketball palace opens and is named Paige Arena after the daughter of “anonymous” booster and Walmart beneficiary Bill Laurie. The building’s name is changed to Mizzou Arena a few days later, after news breaks of a college cheating scandal that involved Paige Laurie.

2006

Athletic Director Mike Alden botches the firing of Snyder. Missouri hires Mike Anderson from UAB.

2006-2011

Anderson leads the Tigers to three straight NCAA Tournament appearances, including an Elite Eight run in 2009. He then bolts for the head coaching job at Arkansas.

2011-2014

Under new coach Frank Haith, the Tigers shock everyone by going 30-4 and winning the Big 12 tournament. They shock everyone again by losing a first-round game in the NCAAs to 15th seed Norfolk State. Haith sticks around for the Tigers’ first two seasons in the SEC, then bolts for Tulsa.

Which brings us to 2015 and the Tigers’ second Coach Anderson in less than four years. When Kim Anderson took the job, many fans had hopes of him returning Missouri to the glory days of Norm Stewart, when they recall the Tigers always playing hard and beating Kansas on a regular basis.

The thing is, even Stewart, over the course of 30 years, could not lead the Missouri Tigers to greatness. His teams won a few Big Eight championships and gave Kansas some headaches, but Stewart also lost a lot of first-round games in the Big Dance, He never reached a Final Four. His teams were talented but often suffered the same confounding lapses that have marked all Missouri basketball teams.

Throughout their history, the Tigers have never quite been tough enough, deep enough or big enough to achieve true college basketball greatness. George Mason, Virginia Commonwealth, Western Kentucky, Indiana State, Seton Hall, and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte have all been to a Final Four. The Missouri Tigers have not.

Yeah, this happened, too.

Maybe they will get there someday. Maybe 2014-15 is Kim Anderson’s Valley Forge, and he will go on to have a long, storied career in Columbia.

I have my doubts, though. The Tigers just posted another dumpster fire of a loss this afternoon, this time to a feeble, inexperienced but well-coached Vanderbilt squad.

It’s just another low for a program that has had too many of them over the past several years.

Stephen Roth is the author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore.

Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

Be Royal

Tags

humor, kansas city, kansas city royals, major league baseball, san francisco giants, sports, Stephen Roth, world series

Today I have nothing to share except this:

And this:

That will be all. Have a wonderful Thursday.

What a Game

Tags

1980, hockey, lake placid, miracle on ice, olympics, president carter, russia, team u.s.a., u.s.s.r., winter olympics

My first vivid sports memory came while riding in the back of my friend’s Oldsmobile station wagon on the way to the Skate Inn on a Saturday morning.

“Did you see that game last night?” my friend asked.

“What game?” I replied.

“The hockey game, dummy,” he said. “We beat the Russians.”

“It was incredible,” his mom chimed in from the front seat. “It was the most amazing game I’ve ever seen.”

“Everyone was screaming, ‘U.S.A.! U.S.A.!’”

“Really?” I said, feeling misinformed. Hockey wasn’t something people talked much about in LaGrange, Georgia. “The Russians, huh?”

I had a vague notion that the Olympics were going on because my dad had taken over our television set, demanding the channel be switched to ABC all week long during primetime hours. One night, we watched some guy in a skin-tight yellow suit named Eric Heiden skate around in circles, and it was pretty boring. I remember being very disappointed about having to miss The Dukes of Hazzard on Friday night, and I probably ended up retreating to my Star Wars figures and army soldiers in the playroom. Somehow, I missed the news that we beat the Russians.

Circling the rink of the Skate Inn while the speakers played Blondie and Michael Jackson, I thought about the Russians and what beating them meant. I was in 3rd grade, so my only understanding of Russia was this big, wide expanse of pink across Europe and Asia that was called the “Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics.” The Russians, my teacher told us, were not our friends. Their people were very poor, and had to wait in long lines for basic things like toilet paper. Yet their military was very powerful. They had just taken over some place called Afghanistan, and the President had gone on television and was very upset about it. The President went on TV a lot in those days, usually to talk about how we needed to save more energy. It was horrible because he was on all the channels, and you just had to wait him out—like waiting for a storm to pass before you could go outside to play—until he was done speaking and Happy Days could come back on.

It would take a while for me to realize the gravity of beating the Russians at that particular time in history with an amateur U.S. hockey team that was not expected to win anything. They would make the cover of the Sports Illustrated magazine that my dad read every week, then there was an awards-show television special about the team that my babysitter gushed over, and then there was the inevitable made-for-TV movie. It was such a momentous culmination of sports, politics and a fairy tale ending that I could almost convince myself, years later, that I had actually seen the game (or the replay of the game, since the original broadcast was tape-delayed for a primetime audience).

I didn’t see it, though. If it had taken place two years later, when I was into sports big-time, I would have been all over it. In 2010, the U.S. hockey team took Team Canada to overtime before losing the Gold Medal. That was an exciting game. Even if the Americans had won, however, it couldn’t have compared with The Miracle On Ice, the one I missed.

“Did you watch the game last night?” another friend asked me over Cokes at the Skate Inn. “My dad jumped so high, he almost put a hole in the ceiling!”

“Yeah,” I said, looking down at my skates. “What a game.”

The Agony of the “Griefs”

Tags

alex smith, andrew luck, chiefs, denver broncos, football, futility, indianapolis colts, kansas city, kansas city chiefs, losing, NFL, peyton manning, playoffs, sports, wild card

There’s a lot of manufactured excitement here in Kansas City this week. The local NFL team, the Chiefs, is in the playoffs for just the third time in the past 10 years. Kansas City sports talk radio stations are filling air time with roundtable discussions about whether the Chiefs can steal a win from the Colts in Indianapolis on Saturday. The Kansas City Star has interviewed everyone from quarterback Alex Smith to the team’s water boy about the big game. This, according to the local media, is a major sporting event for Kansas City.

Missed field goals in the playoffs, like burnt ends, are a KC tradition.

Here’s the thing, though: everyone in town knows that the Chiefs will lose this game, and probably lose it badly. That is not just because the Chiefs are playing on the road against a team that thrashed them, 23-7, just two weeks ago. It is because losing in the playoffs is part of the team’s DNA. It is what the Chiefs, known to some Kansas Citians as the “Griefs,” do more effectively than perhaps any other NFL team.

Since winning their only Super Bowl in January 1970, the Chiefs have gone an amazing 3-12 in the playoffs. They have not won a single playoff game since January 16, 1994, when Joe Montana led them to an improbable win over the Houston Oilers. That was such a long time ago that the Oilers are now the Tennessee Titans, and Joe Montana has a son who plays quarterback for Tulane. Twenty years is a long, damn time between playoff wins. During that period, there have been a handful of heartbreaking losses to keep everyone entertained, including:

– A 10-7 defeat at home to the Colts in 1996, a game in which the heavily favored Chiefs turned the ball over four times and missed three field goals in sub-zero weather.

– A demoralizing 14-10 loss to archrival Denver at Arrowhead in 1998 in which Chiefs quarterback Elvis Grbac could not convert a fourth-and-one deep in Denver territory in the game’s final minute (Chiefs fans, check out this Denver fan’s gleeful summary of the game if you really want to get steamed). The Broncos went on to win the Super Bowl that year.

Yes, it’s been a while.

– Another loss at home to the Colts in 2004, this time by a 38-31 score. This game is notable for the fact that the Chiefs defense never once forced the Colts to punt. Peyton Manning toyed with the boys in red by completing 22 of 30 passes for 304 yards and 3 touchdowns.

This record of futility is well-known to the Colts, who have beaten the Chiefs three of the last five times Kansas City has made the playoffs. The people of Indianapolis can’t wait for the Chiefs to get into town. They might even throw them a parade.

Well, maybe the Chiefs are due for a little postseason success, you might say. Maybe they will do better since Saturday’s game isn’t at Arrowhead, you might suggest. Well, that’s possible, I guess. But even if you ignore 20 years of futility, the current-day fact is that this Chiefs team, like so many before, just isn’t all that great. The Chiefs got off to an impressive 9-0 start by capitalizing on weak competition – only one of the wins over that stretch came against a playoff team. Over the last seven games of the season, as the competition has gotten tougher, the Chiefs are 2-5, winning games against hapless Washington (3-13) and Oakland (4-12).

A smiling Peyton Manning is a familiar sight for Chiefs fans.

There’s another long-time bugaboo working against this Chiefs team: the quarterback position. Alex Smith, whom the Chiefs acquired from the 49ers in the offseason, is a capable field manager. He doesn’t make very many mistakes, and he is having a career year this season. However, the Colts have an even better quarterback in Andrew Luck, heir to Peyton Manning and the player that everyone expects to be the Colts’ cornerstone for years to come. When the Chiefs and Colts faced off two weeks ago, Luck threw for a touchdown and Smith tossed two interceptions. No one will be too surprised if those numbers are similar in Saturday’s rematch.

The lack of a superstar quarterback, more than anything else, has been Kansas City’s undoing in the playoffs. In games against Dan Marino, Peyton Manning, John Elway and Jim Kelly, the Chiefs have put up Steve DeBerg, Trent Green, Elvis Grbac and Dave Krieg. Sad, isn’t it? In my opinion, there’s no coincidence that the team’s only real playoff success of the past 40 years, wins against the Steelers and Oilers in 1994, came with a fading but still great Joe Montana at helm. The formula is simple: you need a brilliant quarterback to win NFL playoff games. Other than the Len Dawson glory days of the 1960s and the two seasons they had with Montana in the ’90s, the Chiefs have never measured up in that department.

While this year’s team will probably be hitting the golf course after Saturday, there is hope that Chiefs can someday make some postseason noise. Head coach Andy Reid led the Eagles to several trips to the NFC Championship and one Super Bowl. He is known as a savvy developer of pro quarterbacks like Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick. The fact that he has the Chiefs in the playoffs at all this season is a small miracle. The team went 2-14 a year ago with most of the same players.

Don’t get me wrong. I would love to see all of Kansas City celebrate a playoff victory. No town deserves it more. I just don’t think it’s going to happen this year. But, for the first time in a long time, the future looks good for Kansas City’s favorite sports team. Maybe someday soon, they will steal a big game from one of those great teams like the Colts, Broncos or Patriots. Then, and only then, will the Chiefs no longer be the Griefs.

I Can’t Quit You, Mizzou

Tags

college, college football, fifth down game, football, gamecocks, missouri, my life, south carolina, tigers

It was a happy night for Carolina.

Immediately after Missouri’s horrific, deplorable 27-24 loss last night to South Carolina, in which the Tigers blew a 17-point fourth quarter lead, then gave up a touchdown on 4th down and 15, then botched a chip-shot field goal that would have tied the game in overtime, I received a text message from one of my best friends from college.

“I quit,” my friend wrote. “I’m serious. I’m not watching, listening, or caring ever again.”

I wish I could say the same, as last night’s debacle will surely join many other infamous, heartbreaking defeats in Mizzou sports history. Unfortunately, I am hooked on the Tigers permanently, and there’s a part of me that feels strangely proud to have survived so many ridiculously devastating defeats (for a rundown on some of the bigger ones, see my post here from last spring). I imagine that fans of the Chicago Cubs, the Cleveland Browns and other star-crossed sports teams feel much the same way. Even the followers of the victorious South Carolina Gamecocks can relate to our pain – their team has only won one conference football championship in its 100-plus year history.

Being a Mizzou fan is tough. It’s like falling in love with a woman who wears a lot of glitter and knows the name of every bartender in the metro area. It’s fun for a while, but you know she’s going to eventually break your heart.

“I liked it better when we were regularly getting thumped by Iowa State,” my friend went on to text. “At least I didn’t get my hopes up.”

Defeats like the one last night take me back to one of my first experiences with Missouri’s version of Lady Luck. It was the notorious Fifth Down Game of 1990, and I would like to say that I was there in the Faurot Field stands that sunny October afternoon, screaming at the officials. I would like to say that, but the fact is that I chose that weekend to attend a church conference in Overland Park, Kansas, with a group called Campus Crusaders for Christ. Me and my devout friends had taken a couple of cars from the DoubleTree Hotel to dinner that Saturday afternoon. When we arrived at the parking lot of Fuddruckers, two guys got out of the other car and asked if we were listening to the Colorado game.

We huddled around one of the car radios and listened breathlessly as Tiger announcer Bill Wilkerson called the game’s final, frenzied minute. When Colorado quarterback Charles Johnson surged toward the end zone on the last play, Wilkerson screamed, “They stopped him! They stopped him!… Wait! They’re signaling touchdown! No! No! No! No! No!”

If Christian boys had been prone to cussing, there would have been a lot of expletives flying around Overland Park that night. Some of the words might have sounded a lot like “Fuddruckers.” Instead, we sadly filed into the restaurant and lined up for the burger buffet. “Man, if we had won that game, we would have been three-and-two,” one of my friends said. “Can you imagine that? Three-and-two!”

We didn’t know about the fifth down controversy until the next morning (here’s an excellent article about the whole thing from ESPN.com). We drove past Faurot Field on our way back to campus that Sunday afternoon and saw that the stadium had been trashed – both sets of goalposts were torn down. For weeks afterward, Missouri students wore T-shirts defiantly proclaiming Tigers 31, Buffaloes 27, the “real” score of the game. I quit Campus Crusaders later on that fall. Maybe it was because nothing seemed to make sense anymore. Maybe it was because my involvement in the group caused me to miss the most historic sports moment of my college career.

I’m a lot older now, and the games don’t affect me nearly as much. I’m only depressed for about a 24-hour period after one of the Tigers’ signature defeats. Still, as I watched that last field goal attempt sail into the black night and bounce off of the left upright, I jumped up and down and channeled Bill Wilkerson from that Colorado game:

No! No! No! No! No!