Why am I a Chiefs fan? It all goes back to a small town basketball game

When Carl Peterson first came to be the general manager of the Kansas City Chiefs, he made it a point for the Chiefs players to inject themselves into the community. Peterson’s goal was for the Chiefs players to get out and make positive changes in people’s lives.

In the early to mid 1990s the Chiefs players would partake in roughly 80 promotional events each off season. One of those promotional events was a trip to my hometown, Glasgow, Missouri.

The school I was attending at the time extended an invite to the Chiefs organization in hopes of raising funds. The invite planned for some Chiefs players to partake in a pickup basketball game against some Glasgow locals. The Chiefs accepted the invite because it would fit well with their “Score Points Against Drugs” offseason program.

The Score Points Against Drugs program had Chiefs players going around Missouri and Kansas giving motivational speeches which carried the message of respecting your parents, avoiding drugs, and staying in school.

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To this day I’m still surprised the event took place in Glasgow because it has a population of roughly 1,200 people.

I was only nine at the time, but I can remember the pickup basketball game pretty well. I remember it well because my dad happened to be one of the Glasgow locals going up against the Chiefs players.

At the time I wasn’t the biggest football fan and I didn’t have a team that I would particularly call my own.

Fast forward to present day and I was curious about knowing more about this particular game so I asked my dad about it.

I asked him what it was like playing against the Chiefs players and he replied with “It was humbling. Those guys were so explosive. They took two steps and they were gone.”

I asked him what players were there, but he couldn’t remember anyone outside of Kimble Anders. I took a trip to our local library and dug up the newspaper archives and I found some pretty cool stuff.

For those of you who can’t read the caption, the players present were David Whitmore, Willie Davis, Jerry Blanton, Rick Hamilton, Kimble Anders, Trent Bryant, and Danan Hughes.

During the game I remember Danan Hughes shooting about 10 half court shots. I remember the Chiefs players kept getting the offensive rebound because they were about 100 times more athletic than any of the Glasgow players.

Here are some more highlights from the game which I pulled from the newspaper archive:

• Immediately following the jump ball at the beginning of the game, two Chiefs players tackled one of the Glasgow players. Force of habit?
• At one point in time a Chiefs player tried to de-pants one of the Glasgow players as they were jumping into the air.
• The Chiefs players were leading 105 to 75, but they let one of the players (it was actually my dad) take numerous free shots to get the score closer.
• The final score of the game was 106 to 96, with the Chiefs players winning.
• The Chiefs players stayed after the game and signed autographs as well as held some kids up to take shots.

My old man was the leading scorer in the game for the Glasgow players. Obviously, this was due to the free shots, but since he’s already probably feeling pretty good about the memory here’s a picture of some of Glasgow’s players sitting on the bench on that day. My dad is the second one from the left.

The following season for the Chiefs was the first season I really got into football. The Chiefs were my team from that point on.

Overall there were three things that really played into my becoming a Chiefs fan and all three of them were mentioned in this article. One was my dad who was also a Chiefs fan, another was my town’s proximity to Kansas City, and lastly it was this awesome experience I had with the Chiefs players during my childhood.

I’m curious if any other Chiefs fans were affected by the Chiefs organization’s community efforts in the 1990s? Times have really changed. I know today’s players do a lot of great things, but I doubt they’d play a pickup basketball game in a small town to help raise money for a tiny school in the middle of nowhere.

Awesome, awesome memory.

Special thanks to Mike Heying from the Glasgow Missourian as well as Amanda and the Lewis Library in Glasgow for providing me the information to make the research in this article possible.