I was having dinner at a sports bar with two friends last Saturday while we watched the Kansas City-Houston AFC divisional-round playoff game on one of the many TVs in the place.

Neither of those men have any ties at all to Kansas City or the Chiefs, or to Houston and the Texans, but they were rooting like crazy for the Chiefs to lose.

“I am tired of watching the Chiefs win. I want to see somebody else,” the one man said.

And every time Houston was penalized, no matter what it was, the other man complained and exclaimed, “The Chiefs get all the calls!”

Sigh.

“I like to see excellence, especially over long periods of time,” I pointed out. “I rooted for the New England Patriots when they were winning all those championships, and I root for the Chiefs now.

“The Patriots won, and the Chiefs are winning now (they are trying to become the first team to capture three Super Bowl titles in a row) because they do all little things right and they make plays when they are there to be made.

“If these other teams want to win, then they’ve got to do that, too.”

I didn’t also say, although I wanted to, that rooting for other teams is like handing out participation awards. We should give everyone a chance.

Yikes.

Remember, in the NFL, everybody is playing under the same rules in every aspect of the game. They all have the same chance.

The Chiefs have the best quarterback in the game in Patrick Mahomes, the best head coach in Andy Reid and the best quarterback-head coach relationship. They can finish each other’s sentences. Those are the three most important parts of any team. It is the recipe for success, and has been for decades.

It was like that in Cleveland when, with Otto Graham and Paul Brown, the Browns made it to the league championship game in each of the team’s first 10 years of existence, capturing seven titles, from 1946-55.

Now the Browns have no quarterback at all and a head coach who has made the playoffs only twice in five years, with just one postseason victory. It is the opposite of the way things used to be.

Sigh, yikes, again.

Steve King