Indiana head football coach Curt Cignetti was being interviewed during the recent College Football Playoffs by a group of ESPN analysts that included Nick Saban.

Cignetti said he learned so much from Saban when he worked as an assistant for him at Alabama.

Saban spoke up and said, “The one thing you didn’t learn from me was talking all that junk you do!”

Saban never talked down to an opponent, and he didn’t let his coaches or players do it, either. The last thing he wanted to do was to give a team bulletin board material, which could give it an emotional boost, and edge.

Saban learned that from Bill Belichick when he worked for him in Cleveland from 1991-94. And Belichick learned it from Bill Parcells when he worked for him with the New York Giants from 1983-90.

Indeed, thou shall not trash talk. Silence is golden.

Late in the 1994 season, Belichick, Saban and the rest of the Browns put on the show of shows in that regard before a game in Dallas, building up the two-time defending Super Bowl champion Cowboys so much that you began wondering why Cleveland should even bother to show up at all. It softened up the Cowboys just enough for the Browns to pull off a stunning down-to-the-last-play 19-14 upset win that was key to their drive to the AFC playoffs as a wild card.

I bring all this up because the same thing, in an entirely different way, is happening again as we get ready to play the Super Bowl exactly 30 years later. Although the Philadelphia Eagles are saying all the right things about their opponent, two-time defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City, the rest of the NFL world, from the teams to the fans to the TV analysts, are all tearing apart the Chiefs by assailing that get all the calls and they have all the luck, and that is really why they win all the time. One big-name — and big-mouth — former player went to far as to claim that it was a big set up by the league, just like a pro rasslin’ match. It has gotten so bad that the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, the best quarterback in the game by far, didn’t even make the AFC Pro Bowl team.

Huh?!

Imagine that?!

To their credit, the smart, savvy Chiefs are playing coy, saying nary a word of rebuttal to all the doubters and naysayers. But behind closed doors, you can bet they are relishing the emotional boost it has given them, because for the first time in who knows how long, the big target has been taken off their backs. They are the hunters instead of the hunted.

If the Chiefs win — and I do think they will and thus become the first team ever to capture three straight Super Bowl titles — then rest assured that they will talk openly about one of the big keys to the victory being the disrespect they received through all the negative talk.

And somewhere, perhaps Nick Saban, Bill Belichick, Bill Parcells and some members of that long-ago Browns team will be chuckling to themselves.

For if you don’t learn from the mistakes of history, then you are doomed to repeat them.

Steve King