A state of champions

By State Rep. J. Eggleston
The big news last week had nothing to do with any bills passed by the legislature. The big news, of course, was the Super Bowl win by the Kansas City Chiefs.
I have to admit that one of my guilty pleasures has been being a die-hard Chiefs fan. The Chiefs’ first Super Bowl win occurred when I was only three years old, so I have no memory of Len Dawson or Buck Buchanan playing. My early memories are of the lean years when the Chiefs won very few games. I recall a joke about the guy who parked at the Plaza with a pair of Chiefs tickets on his dash, and when he came back he found someone had broken out his window and left him two more.
But things started to turn around in the ‘90s. Trent Green, Tony Gonzalez, Christian Okoye, Brian Waters, Neil Smith, Priest Holmes, Will Shields, and the late Joe Delaney and Derrick Thomas donned the red and gold, and began the turnaround for the club. It wasn’t until the Chiefs hired Andy Reid and gave him an arsenal of good players that the Chiefs achieved the opportunity of a Super Bowl win. And on Feb. 2, the Chiefs turned that opportunity into reality, and relieved 50 years of frustration of long suffering Chiefs fans.
Feb. 2 was Groundhog Day – a joyous day which Chiefs fans would not mind reliving over and over. The next day on the Missouri House of Representatives floor I spoke about how in my time in the legislature I had seen the Royals win the World Series, the Blues win the Stanley Cup, and now the Chiefs win a Super Bowl.
While athletics can have its own set of pros, cons, and issues, in times of success it has the power to elicit community and state pride. It is great to hail from a state of champions.