by Kevin Burton
My wife Jeannette got the news late: the Kansas City Chiefs are Super Bowl champions!
She got the news late because she left the game in the second quarter and headed to bed. Her work starts very early and so bedtime comes early too, Super Bowl or not.
She woke up Monday morning after a full night’s sleep, without having heard any undue exclamations from the neighbors’ dogs, or her sports-obsessed husband.
“I just assumed they lost,” she said Monday, “because I didn’t hear any screaming. Then I looked this morning and they won!”
“I was trying to be quiet for you,” I said.
She appreciated my restraint. But this may be a good time to drop in the caveat, that I make no promises about how quiet I’ll be if Cincinnati ever wins a Super Bowl.
Jeannette had done the marital math and made an excellent calculation: no screaming equals no winning. She had been through this before.
Her logic is traceable to the night of Oct. 27, 2015 and game 1 of the 2015 World Series, Kansas City Royals vs New York Mets. The Royals trailed 4-3 in the bottom of the ninth with one out, when Alex Gordon hit a solo home run to deepest center field to tie the game.
There was more than a little screaming just then, so much so that Jeannette had to get up and make sure the outburst was baseball-related and no other more serious calamity had befallen me.
I was yelling “get up, get up” to the baseball, not to her, really.
Anyway, in her mind that screaming set a pattern. In the eight-plus years since then however, I have gained some self-control or empathy for the sleeper or whatever.
Or maybe it was the fact that it is a pure miracle when the Royals bubble up into even third place, let alone the World Series, but the Chiefs, as presently constructed, can win any year.
Since the Chiefs are only my second-favorite team and since I don’t hate the Eagles, the game was quite comfortable for me. I definitely wanted KC to win, but didn’t have the need to pace the floor, stomach churning.
Die-hard Chiefs fans wouldn’t trade this win for anything, I am sure. But I would.
Sometime during Super Bowl week my mind went back to the previous Philby-vs-KC title match, the 1980 World Series between the Royals and Philadelphia Phillies. That 1980 team may be my favorite Royals team ever. Even though my old Reds hero Pete Rose was playing for the Phillies then, I would trade Sunday’s Chiefs win for Royals over Phillies in a heartbeat.
But it doesn’t work that way.
More Super Bowl reflections:
The ankle sprain to superstar Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes that many thought would lose the game for KC, may have won it. I thought the Chiefs were better than my Bengals the year before, but lost the AFC championship because Mahomes was playing heroball, chucking the ball downfield in overtime when a methodical drive would have won it.
With the bad wheel Sunday, Mahomes had to let the game come to him and it paid off.
As for Super Bowl commercials, none of them really got my attention this year. However a recurring commercial from this season did come into play.
Jeannette loves the Progressive commercial where the couple is arguing about who was supposed to pack the life jackets for a boating trip they were taking. She says he was supposed to pack them, he says she was.
The guy pulls out a red challenge flag, like the one NFL coaches have and challenges. It is a “what really happened” replay, according to Progressive.
The wife wins the challenge, which is of course why Jeannette loves the commercial.
We all know a lot of things on TV aren’t realistic.
Well, for her birthday, I got her a novelty gift, one of those red challenge flags. It’s kind of small. The ones on TV look bigger. But it serves the purpose and it made her day.
Fortunately for her (or could it be for me?) the challenge flag doesn’t come with the headset and the film from multiple camera angles that shows “what really happened.”
At our house, the Christmas tree comes down on Super Sunday or shortly thereafter every year. Perhaps we should just put the challenge flag away, with the tinsel, ornaments and lights, for safe keeping. That would keep domestic peace throughout baseball season.
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