When Frogs Fly, The Chiefs Will Win the Superbowl

For the last few days I’ve been trying to sum up my current feelings about the Kansas City Chiefs and had a lot of difficulty.

In January, the Chiefs have managed to reel one of the top, young management minds in the game – if not all of sports – and fire one of the worst coaches in franchise history.*

*The Chiefs have had nine head coaches and one interim head coach in franchise history including the Texans years. Below is how they stack up:

Schottenheimer (10 seasons): 101-58-1, .634
Stram (15 seasons): 124-76-10, .614
Vermeil (5 seasons): 44-36, .550
Cunningham (2 seasons): 16-16, .500
Mackovic (4 seasons): 30-34, .469
Levy (5 seasons): 31-42, .425
Wiggin (2.5 seasons): 11.24, .314
Edwards (3 seasons): 15-33, .313
Ganz (2 seasons): 8-22-1, .274
Bettis (interim HC in ‘77): 1-6, .143

You can give all the arguments you want about how he had to rebuild and that he inherited some kind of crazy mess from Vermeil and what not. That may be true, but Schottenheimer inherited a mess too. Stram built a team from the ground up and then managed to have a string of 10-straight winning seasons. Levy was a .500 coach after his first season with the Chiefs. Mackovic even won 10 games in his final season. Edwards’ teams got progressively worse. He swung and missed on Brodie Croyle; his defenses, his supposed strength, got worse every year; he turned LJ into a run-down, woman-beating low life, and then managed to be the first Chiefs head coach to have a two-win 16 game season and the first to only win two games and be employed for the full season. Outstanding work I must say.

However, it has become clear to me that my fandom is about to take a radical change. Since Scott Pioli has been hired there has been this new “professional” attitude in which all peoples who work at Arrowhead operate as if they have a brain. This is nice for two reasons: It at least gives the impression that the Chiefs know what they are doing and it makes Chris Mortensen look like a baboon.*

*Calling someone a “baboon” is an insult used far too infrequently.

But there is a hard reality to dealing with a franchise that operates close to the vest: There is nothing substantive to talk about. Normally information is free-flowing from Arrowhead, thus providing real events and facts in which to analyze and breakdown. But things are different now. We are forced to actually wait for the decision to occur before we can say anything. This provides this weird interim period in which rumors fly and people go crazy.

This period of time can be fun, but only for a while. Then it gets old. REALLY old. I’d like to compare it to a conversation I heard a five-year-old Autistic kid and one of his peers have during snack time this week at work. It went something like this:

A-kid: I like the red Spiderman.

Dumb kid*: I like the black Spiderman (This is a reference to the villain “Venom” in the Spiderman “graphic novels.” I’ve learned a lot about Spiderman recently…).

A-kid: I like the red Spiderman because he eats food like this. [He then proceeds to shove food in his mouth and shake his head back and forth while licking his fingers – a very complicated maneuver for the child.]

Dumb kid: I like the black Spiderman because he eats… he eats frogs.

A-kid: [Gives Dumb Kid a look of utter confusion.**]

Dumb kid: [Does not recognize A-kid’s dumbfounded look and elaborates.] I like the black Spiderman because he can fly.

A-kid: No. [A-kid is now disgusted by Dumb Kid’s lack of black Spiderman knowledge.] Black Spiderman can’t fly.

Dumb kid: Yes he can. He flies like a frog.

A-kid: [Scoffs at this notion with a condescending laugh.] Frogs can’t fly.

Dumb kid: Yes they can!

A-kid: No they can’t. Only dragons can fly.

*I’m not kidding about how stupid this kid is. For the sake of this Pozstricks I will call him “Calvin”. Calvin is a Title One kid. This means, in short, that there is nothing cognitively wrong with him (his brain is healthy), but there is an underlying situation (poverty, single-parent home, foster child, lived outside the country, etc.) that has delayed his development. Calvin is a misdiagnosed Title-kid. He’s an idiot, if you’re allowed to say that about a five-year-old. Calvin reminds me a lot of the fat, slow, stupid henchmen in movies whose only purpose is to be superhero fodder and slow him down a little bit to give the villain a chance to runaway or set up some kind of trap. He looks exactly like that – only he’s a five-year-old. I fully expect to see him in movies 25 years from now.

ANYWAY, everyday when Calvin arrives at school we go over to his cubby to put his coat and backpack away. While we are there, we stare at his nametag and go letter-by-letter how to spell his name. Generally, I point to the “C” and he will say “T”. I’ll point to the “A” and he will say “Q”. I’ll point to the “L” and he’ll say “S”. This goes on until we get to the “N” in which he says, “Seven.” So, if you’re keeping score at home, one should spell “Calvin” as such: T-Q-S-P-K-7. He does all of this truly believing he is correctly spelling his name. Mind you, we’ve done this exercise everyday since the middle of August and he has been seeing a therapist once a week all school year to specifically work on language skills such as recognizing his name. Ugh. Oh well, at least we know his problem isn’t his brain…

**One of the fantastic stereotypes about autistic kids is that they have limited facial expressions. And, like all stereotypes, this is true. Normally, this is something that I would hate because my whole communication pattern is predicated on non-verbal feedback. I NEED non-verbals or else I'll have a meltdown and runaway - it's true, ask Andrew. ANYWAY, this isn't a problem for me with autistic preschoolers because they think I'm cool anyway for being 16-feet tall (to them). That and half of them don't know how to talk yet. That also helps. The point I'm getting at here is that, even in their limited facial expressions, they are fantastically well-tailored for lighting up the "unintentional comedy odmeter" for various social situations. For instance, the A-kid in the story above's second (he has three) facial expression is one that is interchangeable for "you're an idiot" and "I don't understand" moments. However, the facial expression leans towards the "you're an idiot" side when it initially comes across his face. This is great. For instance, you can tell him his shirt is blue and he'll flash his second face and you'll instantly feel retarded. It's fantastic. It's even more fantastic when one of the middle-aged female teachers looks at him and says, "Don't I look younger today?" and he flashes the second face. It's beautiful. A-kids don't lie and it's wonderful. Except for when it's about you... then it sucks.

And there you have it – the Chiefs offseason so far.

One reporter – we’ll call him Mris Chortensen – makes some crazy claim like, “Mike Shanahan is the next Chiefs head coach.” And then this is reputed by another reporter who retorts with a half-truth, half-speculative comment: “That’s not true! Mike Shanahan is not the next Chiefs head coach… I think.”

So while the rest of us fans are sitting at bars and standing by the figurative water cooler debating the merits of whether or not certain species of dragons can fly, the Chiefs – more specifically Scott Pioli – is roaming the halls of Arrowhead hoarding information and actually following a plan.* And you know what? I’m okay with that. I’m alright debating what constitutes flying in relation to certain types of frogs or whether rumored head coach candidate Todd Haley is capable of leading the Chiefs or if Chris Mortensen is the worst reporter in the history of mankind if I know that somewhere inside Arrowhead Stadium, Scott Pioli is building a championship team. I can live with that.

*I think.

But what I do know for certain is that the quantity of my informed Chiefs opinions are going to decrease.

I also know jack shit about dragons.