Chiefs GM Scott Pioli appeared on KCTV5's Off The Bench with Michael Coleman last night. The entire video is interesting but there was one passage that I thought was pretty cool.
At one point, Pioli was asked about his 'Individuals go to Pro Bowls, teams win championships' line and broke off into a passionate tangent on what happens when you win a championship.
Here's what he had to say:
"What people want in athletics is championships. They want to be the best. Again, based on the background of people I've worked with, I believe in championships. I believe in teams. At a very young age, I saw the impact that winning a championship had on a community.
"Later on, when I was coaching in college, I saw the impact it had on another community [and] then in my time in New England.
"We get into this because winning championships is something you can share with someone. You can share with a large group of people. Individual awards and honors is...I don't want to call it seflish but it's something that only one person can live with. It's great you collect those things but....
"I have this saying: Individuals go to Pro Bowls, teams win championships. That saying is based on, what we wanna do here is build a championship.
"We want to build a championship because it has this impact on the community and the fans. The fans, sure they love to buy a jersey of Joe Smith and wear it to the game and it's a nice and wonderful thing beause they have this Pro Bowlers jersey on but I've seen what championships do to communities. I've seen what it does to fanbases. I've seen what it does to groups of people. It brings people together on a level that's so different than all of the individual things."