Waiting...And Hoping...And Agonizing

Copyright © 2020

by Ralph F. Couey

It's 3:10 on a Thursday morning and I'm at work.  Eating lunch, by the way.  The world is fairly quiet, although everyone here in Hawai'i is keeping a close eye on the progress of the Corona Virus.  In three days, I will be parked in front of my television nervously waiting to see how the first Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl in a half-century will play out.  

Sometime, somewhere on a battlefield, some grizzled old soldier opined, "The worst part of a battle is waiting for it to begin."  Anyone who has been in combat knows what that means. Once the battle is joined, you know what to do, and in a way, what to expect.  Waiting, however, is empty time when a person's mind is given free rein to entertain all the possibilities, both the good and bad.  I understand that this is just a football game (albeit a very important one) and nobody is going to die.  Nevertheless, as the days count down, I am nervously exploring all the outcomes that could happen.  You have to understand that, as Chiefs fans, we must prepare emotionally for the worst.  This team's playoff history is a long list of unbelievable ways to lose a football game.  Now we find ourselves on the brink of the biggest contest in 50 years, still haunted by those memories.

As the two teams have been compared by experts, it's amazing how the interplay of strengths and weaknesses render the 49ers and Chiefs remarkably even.  The Chiefs are favored, but only by a point-and-a-half, a razor-thin margin that reflects the universal analyses.  I won't go over those discussions here, but there is a wild card, the one player upon whom the final score will turn.

Patrick Mahomes II is...indescribably good at what he does.  He has a cannon for an arm that gives him the ability to put a ball on a dime 40 or 50 yards downfield.  And if all the receivers are covered, he turns to his feet.  In the last month, the world has watched as he brought his team back from a 24 point deficit with seven consecutive touchdowns. A week later, he brought them back from a 10 point lag to a decisive victory.  Clearly, no lead is safe.  It would be easy to assume that the magic will happen again, and after 60 minutes of hard, bruising football, the Chiefs will hoist the Lombardi Trophy into the warm Miami sky.  

But, as we endlessly remind ourselves, these are our Chiefs, and anything can happen and has happened in the past, leaving a city full of broken hearts.  It's hard to be completely optimistic given that sad history.  But this feels different.  Both the offense and defense are clearly at the top of their game.  Everyone's healthy and there's clearly no reason to harbor dark thoughts.  I know there are very good reasons for having two weeks between the conference championships and the Super Bowl.  But for the fan of one of those teams, the wait can be interminable.  Even at the advanced age that I am, and that usually days fly by so rapidly that you can almost here the "whoosh," these two weeks have crawled by.  Normally I am hoping that time could slow down a little since I have less of that to play with now.  But I'm impatient. I want the game to start. Now.  

The approach to the Big Game is always a media circus, and the reporters explore every single aspect of the game and the players to ridiculous lengths.  But that's not all that's going on.  There is the threat of a new and dangerous pandemic brewing in China and beginning to leak to other countries worldwide.  In the United States, the House and Senate are locked in partisan political combat cloaked as an impeachment proceeding.  And a few days ago, an icon, a giant of basketball, Kobe Bryant died suddenly and tragically in a helicopter crash along with his 13-year-old daughter.  Usually late January is a graveyard for news.  It's too cold and snowy, in fact, the big stories are normally about the weather.  This year is different.  But on Sunday afternoon (for us in Hawai'i) all that will be...not forgotten, but at least set aside for four or five hours while we celebrate an athletic championship that has grown to become a full part of our culture.  Even if a viewer doesn't have a dog in this fight, there are still those epic commercials to be viewed and judged.

My son, Robbie, who is as well-formed and analytical a football fan as anybody who sits in front of a camera, and as rabid a Chiefs fan as exists anywhere (raised him right, we did), could not commit when asked about a prediction for the game.  The experts give the edge to the Chiefs, but its only an edge.  My heart says the Chiefs win this one for sure. Nobody can keep up with the Kid, and I expect him to do surgery on the SF secondary.  But my football brain says that this game is a pick 'em.  The end result will be one score, executed in the waning seconds of the game.  Or it will turn on a sack, an interception, a fumble, or a failure to pick up that one last first down.  This one won't be over until the clock shows zeroes.  

And we can only hope that it will be the Chiefs who will be left standing.