A Chiefs story: Moving home, unborn children and memories of my father

I normally have a pretty good idea on the kind of story that I'm going to write for these Monday morning posts. For the first few games of the season I had wrote an offensive breakdown that posted each Monday morning. I'd chart the Kansas City Chiefs offense and then go through all of the information and tabulate personnel groupings, formations, situations, etc, to look for tendencies. I'd work on this well into the night and until the sun came up on Monday morning. I love doing those posts and providing some new and original information for Arrowhead Pride, but since our offense literally 'broke down' against the San Diego Chargers I'm going to save that post for another day.

Some of you already know a little bit about me but for those of you that don't I'll go ahead and fill you in so we're all on the same page for the sake of understanding this post. My wife and I currently live in San Diego and are in the process of moving back to the Kansas City area. I grew up just south of Overland Park and graduated from Blue Valley High School in 2001, while my wife was born and raised in Manhattan. We met at Kansas State where she was on the Wildcat volleyball team and I was a member of the baseball team. We have been married for just over two years and have lived in San Diego for three years now.

We had always talked while we were dating about moving away after college while we were young and didn't have the responsibilities. We were just going to take off and move to somewhere like California for a little while and experience living by the beach in a place like San Diego and take in all that it has to offer. We didn't have kids and we weren't planning on having any immediately so we could just pack up and move. We went ahead and did that while knowing the whole time that moving back to the Midwest was always part of the deal.

Well that part of the deal is here now and we're moving back sometime between next week and Thanksgiving (long story). You're probably asking yourself right about now what any of this has to do with the Kansas City Chiefs. Well I'm going to tell you a story that I'm sure many of you out there can relate to right now.

I grew up fortunate enough to have a father that was a die-hard Chiefs fan. We had a routine growing up that we followed every Sunday the Chiefs had a home game. We were creatures of habit. We stopped at the same places on the way out to the game, we listened to the same pregame radio show and parked in the same lot each Sunday. I was excited each time we pulled into the lot to find out if it was Coach Rampy and the Blue Valley football team that was directing traffic in our particular lot that day. I remember the smell of the tunnels and the sound of the Tomahawk chop echoing through the roundabout tunnels as we went up to section 338.

I remember all of these things as if they were yesterday. It's something that as a kid I could never understand or comprehend, that these memories and these trips to Arrowhead would be some of the best memories I have with my dad growing up. Maybe it's the combination of moving home and knowing that starting a family and having kids is on the horizon, but having been without my dad for eight years this November, I think about the things I did growing up that meant enough to me that they're clear as day 20 years later.

This probably isn't 'The sky is falling' type post that will flood AP today, and it's not meant to dissuade people and their pitch forks. It's simply stating my fears about what a prolonged lack of success could ultimately do to my future ability as a father to share something that meant so much to be as a kid, with my own children. I want my kids to be able to see and feel the same things at Arrowhead that I was fortunate enough to experience probably close to 100 times as a kid.

I'm not trying to lower the bar or standard to which fans should hold their favorite teams accountable because of some elongated timetable of success, that's not it at all. I want that same Arrowhead atmosphere alive and well when I take my kids to the stadium one day. Two bad losses in a row to start the season at HOME will only mean bad things in talking specifically about the atmosphere of the games at Arrowhead. It's still going to be Arrowhead stadium and I know many of you will be out there every Sunday because it's what you do, it's who you are and we are of the same breed. But the atmosphere changes when there are fewer people there. A positive atmosphere is contagious and it needs people to spread.

I want this team to win every time they step on the field and I'll be supporting this team through thick and thin because for lack of a better way of explaining it, that's what my father would do and he's the best man I've ever known. I hope that I can pass along these same values to my children because learning the value of unwavering support far exceeds any minute discussion of the general manager, head coach, quarterback or even the long snapper. It's not about them. It's not about them in my support of this team. It's about me, my dad, my memories and the bind that connects them all together. This team, this city and the ten's of thousands of fans that were there with us sharing the same thing with their friends and family every Sunday.

That's what this is about.