Rocky Mountain Sigh

For the first time in several years, I did not attend a Chiefs' game this season at Arrowhead Stadium. There was no particular effort not to attend a home game. I didn't, like many others, decide to boycott the team because of its dismal play. I didn't turn down opportunities to use a friend's ticket, nor did I leave tickets on the dash of my car hoping they would be stolen. It just didn't work out for me to attend a game, and given the team's 1-7 home record this season, I suppose I should consider myself fortunate.

Most people would breathe a deep sigh of relief for sparing themselves a close encounter with the football train wreck that has been the Chiefs' 2012 season. Almost everyone would be relieved that, when asked to choose their favorite 2012 Arrowhead play, they didn't have to choose from among one of Dustin Colquitt's punts. (Football Sidebar: If you are a really good football team, you NEVER have to punt. It's a bad thing to punt alot, unless your offensive strategy is to punt on every down in hopes of coaxing a roughing the kicker penalty). Still others would have been happy that by avoiding all eight Chiefs' home games, they saved themselves enough money to put their first-born through college.

But I'm not any of those people. I don't resemble them at all. I instead am now in Denver preparing  to watch our 2-13 Chiefs take on the playoff-bound Broncos tomorrow afternoon at Sports Authority Field at Mile High. I guess I figured since I'd missed out on so much abuse in the stands this fall at Arrowhead, I would travel 600 miles west to allow 75,000 Coloradans make fun of me in my Chiefs' regalia as Peyton Manning puts on a clinic. As my friend Clay told me, "this will be a lesson in humility."

One might think that in making the decision to travel to Denver that I had availed myself of too much of Colorado's newest cash crop (not cantaloupe). One might think I had already been spending too much time in oxygen-depleted air. Or, one might think I had been invited by my pal John Elway to sit in his private box (okay, maybe not that last one).

But I'm not going to Denver for any of those reasons. I'm going to watch the Chiefs play the Broncos because my sweet daughter Phoebe asked me to go with her. She asked if we could go with her friend Aleana and Aleana's father, Tom (both devout Bronco fans) for a memorable father-daughter weekend culminating with the Chiefs-Broncos game. How could I say no? Public humiliation, private frustration yielding to public anger, and the risk of physical harm are small prices to pay for a lifetime-enduring memory with your daughter.

And after all, this is an NFL football game for pity's sake. It's not like Phoebe wanted me to attend a father-daughter ballet. It's not  like Phoebe wanted me to watch 24 hours worth of Project Runway with her. Phoebe, as her high school football team's statistician, knows football (she can even accurately attribute passing and receiving yards for a hook-and-ladder play). She knows good football and she knows bad football, and we will together enjoy every minute of it--unless we end up not speaking to Tom and Aleana for some reason.

And, in a Jim Carrey-Lauren Holly-Dumb and Dumber sort of way, the Chiefs actually have a chance of winning the game. Wouldn't that be a fitting capstone to a great father-daughter weekend?

So watch for us tomorrow as we risk life and limb to experience football at 5,280 feet. The air will be thin, but the drama thick as we rep our boys from K.C.

We hope to return alive. We hope to return victorious. And we hope to still catch a ride back with Tom and Aleana.  But if we don't, we'll still have each other, and a great non-ballet father-daughter memory.