I assume that is my second to say I’ve formally lifted the curse of failure from the Kansas City Chiefs, and they’re free.
The curse?
Well, yeah. Until the Chiefs beat the 49ers 31-20 Sunday night time to win Super Bowl LIV, that snakebit Missouri-based franchise (sure Missouri, Mr. President) had gone 50 years with no title.
What occurred not lengthy after their final Super Bowl win in January 1970 in opposition to the Vikings? What symbolic factor?
This: the Chiefs drafted a younger, authority-probing (wise-ass?) but unsure cornerback from Northwestern named, ahem, Rick Telander.
When I got here to camp at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, in the summertime of 1971, the Chiefs had performed one season after beating Fran Tarkenton and the Vikings, and had been hungry to win one other crown and set up themselves as an official dynasty.
Unfortunately, what occurred as an alternative was they lower that frisky younger Wildcat defender earlier than the common season — with coach and basic supervisor Hank Stram wishing him effectively in his future non-football pursuits (of which he had none deliberate and even contemplated). The Chiefs would win the AFC West that 12 months, however then they’d play within the longest sport ever, dropping a 27-24 heartbreaker in double-overtime to the Dolphins within the AFC Championship Game.
After that playoff loss, the Chiefs had been consigned to irrelevance for nearly half a century.
The younger, dismissed Telander didn’t notice at first that he was the rationale for the Chiefs’ failure. But it was talked about to him greater than as soon as in subsequent years that, hey, the Chiefs have sucked since they lower you, bubby! What do you consider that?
Usually this was in a bar or someplace comparable. Usually later somewhat than earlier.
In time, Telander got here to benefit from the notion that he had laid a Billy Goat-like hex on the Chiefs as karma for being so merciless and silly as to rush him into ‘‘the rest of his life.’’ Of course, he at all times knew this was bogus since slicing him was akin to a porpoise shedding a barnacle, with the Chiefs being the swift, oceangoing mammal and he being the tiny, sessile invertebrate.
After all, on that staff from which he was dismissed had been 9 future Hall of Famers, 11 in the event you counted Stram and proprietor Lamar Hunt. And this Telander lad was of a distinct class, for positive. His revealed diary of that coaching camp (‘‘Like a Rose: A Celebration of Football”) proves as a lot.
Here are a pair freebie tales from these camp days:
Quarterback Len Dawson was very sort to Telander, permitting him to come back into his dorm room within the evenings, squat on the ground and take heed to veterans resembling punter Jerrel Wilson and backup quarterback Mike Livingston and Dawson himself inform tales that had been R-rated at greatest. On the ground close to the place he crouched had been stacked instances of beer, obtainable to any good friend of Lenny’s. Telander marveled on the stamina of those males who by no means appeared to sleep.
In camp there was a rookie sort out, Charles Roundtree, from Grambling, a shy, very giant — OK, fats — fellow, whom the vets liked to tease. It was at all times, ‘‘Yo, Tree, wha’s happ’nin’?’’ adopted by laughter.
When Tree was pressured to face on his chair and sing the Grambling struggle music at lunch, in terror and confusion, it got here out: ‘‘Fight for dear ol’ Gramblin’/We’re gonna win with a torch and little doubt/Rah, rah, rah.’’
Even I snorted into my closed hand. Of course, I didn’t need to draw consideration to myself. God forbid! A 3rd-year vet on the staff, former Northwestern star heart Jack Rudnay, did me a favor forever. I begged him early on to please prepare it with the elders that I wouldn’t have to face and sing my struggle music — I imply, to this present day I don’t know all of the phrases to ‘‘Go, You Northwestern’’ — and I used to be, like Roundtree, fearful of the sure humiliation in entrance of huge, vicious males.
Like a backroom mob capo, Rudnay did me that favor, someway shopping for me a cross from the vets in management. Fittingly, I…