KANSAS CITY Darnell Savage Jr. Jersey , Mo. — and winning smile stood inside the mostly empty Kansas City Chiefs locker room, his team having just won a home playoff game for the first time in 25 years.He talked about how much it meant to their long-suffering fans. Spoke glowingly about coach Andy Reid and his young superstar quarterback, Patrick Mahomes. He praised the rest of a team that captured its third straight AFC West title before knocking off the Colts in the playoffs.It wasn’t until Clark Hunt was asked about winning the AFC title game that he became emotional.You see, the Chiefs were founded by his father, the late Lamar Hunt, who, along with seven others in what would be called “The Foolish Club,” founded the American Football League.The personable Texas businessman’s importance to establishing the modern NFL was honored in 1984, when the league renamed the silver trophy awarded to the winner of the AFC championship game the Lamar Hunt Trophy.So it’s easy to understand why his son, now the team’s chairman and the most visible face of the ownership family, would have tears in the corners of his eyes at the thought of holding it for the first time with a win over the New England Patriots on Sunday night.“It’s been a long time coming,” Clark Hunt said. “Since Andy came here we’ve had a lot of shots, but we finally have a chance to win the AFC championship, and to do it at home is so special for us.”The Chiefs have never played an AFC title game at Arrowhead Stadium. They won at Buffalo to reach the first Super Bowl, and at the New York Jets and Oakland on their way to their lone Super Bowl triumph, over Minnesota, in 1970. Then came the NFL-AFL merger and the advent of conference championship games, of which Kansas City has played in only one, a loss at Buffalo in January 1994.Indeed, the opportunity to return to the NFL’s biggest stage for the first time in 49 years has been a long time coming. The Chiefs lost eight consecutive postseason games during one maddening stretch, and squandered the No. 1 seed along the way. They had great individual players — Tony Gonzalez, Priest Holmes, Joe Montana — yet never managed to hoist the AFC championship trophy.Former coach Dick Vermeil, who took the Eagles to the Super Bowl and won it with the Rams, said this week that “my biggest regret” was failing to deliver it during his five seasons in Kansas City.“It would be great. I mean Elgton Jenkins Jersey , when your name is on it, that’s a pretty big thing,” said current Chiefs coach Andy Reid, who still remembers meeting Lamar Hunt during an ownership meeting years ago.Hunt died in December 2006 at the age of 74.“To have the opportunity to work with his kids and Clark in particular, I understand the importance of that,” Reid said. “Not that he has to tell me. He doesn’t have to say anything.”In fact, the Chiefs make sure everybody knows the importance.“One of the awesome things we do with our player development team is that they take us through the whole history,” Mahomes said. “We come over to the museum that we have in the stadium and they take us through how he made the AFL, pretty much from scratch, and had this vision for what is now the AFC and combined it with the NFL and made this beautiful league.“It truly is special for someone like that who has created your franchise,” Mahomes added. “You want to do whatever you can to bring honor to him and that family.”The Patriots are no strangers to hoisting the Lamar Hunt Trophy, of course. They are playing for it for the eighth consecutive season, and the coach-quarterback combination of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady has succeeded in hoisting it eight times since their first real season together in 2001.But despite a perennial juggernaut standing in the way, there is a profound sense of confidence that surrounds the Chiefs these days, an unabashed optimism that can be felt all around town.Fountains are colored red — at least, those that haven’t frozen — and Chiefs banners hang off many of the city’s iconic buildings. Fans are streaming into Charlie Hustle, a local vintage clothing store, for their “Arrowhead Collection” of shirts. Those who aren’t making a buck off the Chiefs’ playoff ride are spending a buck to support them, or in many cases several hundred bucks.The stars are quite literally aligning: There is a “super blood wolf moon” due Sunday night, where the sun, Earth and moon line up and the moon is cast in a rusty (Chiefs-like) red tint.The fan fever is not unlike the way the city embraced the Royals when they made back-to-back World Series appearances in 2014-15. And when they won the 2015 championship, some 800,000 turned out for the parade.Imagine how many would show up if the Chiefs won the Super Bowl.“It means a lot just to make it to this point,” said Chiefs linebacker Justin Houston, one of the team’s elder statesmen. “I’ve never had this opportunity Jace Sternberger Jersey , so I think it will mean a lot to me, to (the Hunt family) and to the city.”Yes, the Hunt family.Clark Hunt knows better than to plan for parades before games are won. The Chiefs have come up short many times, and the sting of those disappointments still lingers after all these years. Yet the franchise is also on the precipice of something great, a potential salve to make that pain go away.“It’s very special, obviously, for our entire family,” Hunt said. “It’s one of the goals that I always put out for the players at the beginning of the year. First thing we want to do is win that Lamar Hunt Trophy. Then we want to go to the Super Bowl and win that Lombardi Trophy.”100<button class="view-gallery">View Gallery</button> Gallery:View from the sidelines: NFL cheerleaders 2018Raj Mehta-USA TODAY Sports | Raj Mehta ATLANTA (AP)Tommy Nobis, the first player drafted by the expansion Atlanta Falcons and a hard-hitting middle linebacker who was never fully recognized for his talents on a struggling franchise that failed to make the playoffs during his long career, died Wednesday. He was 74. The team said he died at his suburban Atlanta home after an extended illness with his wife of more than 50 years, Lynn, at his side. Nobis was among hundreds of ex-NFL players who struggled with physical and cognitive ailments after their careers ended, having played in an era when no one paid much attention to the lingering impact of concussions nor thought twice about groggily going back on the field after a shot to the head. When the Falcons reached the Super Bowl last season, his wife told the Houston Chronicle she wasn’t sure if Nobis had any idea what his former team had accomplished. ”We’ve told him the Falcons are in the Super Bowl, and we wear red and black,” Lynn Nobis said. ”But it doesn’t seem to click. I don’t know if he understands.” A native of San Antonio who sported a red-headed crew cut, Nobis starred on both sides of the line at the University of Texas, where his No. 60 is one of six numbers retired by the school. Despite being slowed by a knee injury during his senior season, he won the Maxwell Award as the nation’s best all-around player and the Outland Trophy as top lineman. He also finished seventh in the Heisman Trophy balloting – highest among those who played defense – and appeared on the cover of Life and Sports Illustrated. “The best defender in college football,” SI declared . He was drafted first overall by the Falcons and also picked by his home-state Houston Oilers of the American Football League, leading to a spirited bidding war that drew interest as far away as outer space. While orbiting the Earth in his Gemini spacecraft, astronaut Frank Borman – whose two sons were ball boys for the Oilers – urged Nobis to sign with Houston . ”I hope he comes here,” Borman said as his spaceship flew over Houston during its 59th orbit. Nobis wound up signing with Atlanta, becoming the first player in franchise history and a beloved figure who would forever be known as “Mr. Falcon.” He earned NFL rookie of the year honors and the first of five Pro Bowl berths in 1966, the launch of an 11-year career spent entirely with the Falcons. No. 60 has never been worn by any other Atlanta player. Nobis was among the initial inductees into the team’s ”Ring of Honor” in 2004. Former Falcons coach Dan Reeves Dexter Williams Jersey , who entered the league a year ahead of Nobis and became good friends, called him ”the best middle linebacker I ever played against in my time” – an era that included Hall of Famers such as Dick Butkus and Ray Nitschke. ”Tommy could play the run and the pass,” Reeves said. ”Butkus was really good against the run, but Tommy could do both really good. He never came out of the game. Nitschke was good, but he was with a great team.” Nobis never got the chance to play for a great NFL team, which is likely the main reason he was passed over for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The Falcons had only two winning seasons in his career and only came close to making the playoffs in 1973. ”The fact that he’s not in is really a tragedy,” Reeves said. ”But they go so much by the team, by winning. They just didn’t have that ability being an expansion team. … He wasn’t surrounded by a lot of great players.” Nobis was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1981. Playing both linebacker and offensive guard, he helped the Longhorns win the national title in 1963 under coach Darrell Royal and is perhaps best remembered for leading a fourth-down stop at the goal line on Joe Namath to preserve a 21-17 victory over top-ranked Alabama in the 1965 Orange Bowl . ”When you’re one of the six numbers retired in the long, proud history of Texas football, your legacy is something special,” said former Texas coach Mack Brown. ”Coach Royal told me many times that Tommy was one of the best players he had ever coached or seen. He was as physically dominant of a linebacker as the game will ever have.” As an NFL rookie, Nobis was credited unofficially with a staggering 296 solo and assisted tackles – an average of more than 21 per game that remains the franchise record. He also had 12 career interceptions, returning two for touchdowns. After his playing days were over, Nobis spent another three decades in the Falcons front office and became well known in Atlanta for running a charitable organization that provided job training to people with disabilities. ”We will always be grateful for his many contributions to our team and community,” Falcons owner Arthur Blank said in a statement. Nobis’ individual brilliance was overshadowed by the Falcons’ cumulative record of 50-100-4 during his career. He retired after a dismal 1976 campaign, his next-to-last game a 59-0 rout by the Los Angeles Rams. ”It’s a stigma,” Nobis told The Associated Press in a 1998 interview. ”When you’re a part of something that’s losing, it’s hard to pull out of it. Very hard.” Nobis had been in poor health with physical and cognitive ailments that may have been related to his football career. He was among hundreds of ex-players who were part of a plan that reimburses them for expenses related to the treatment of dementia and other neurological disorders. He also was among the plaintiffs who settled a massive concussion lawsuit against with the league. ”It’s sad what football has done to these players,” his wife said in the interview with the Houston newspaper. ”But I know he loved it more than anything. He wouldn’t have had it any other way.” Tommy is survived by his wife and three children, Tommy, Kevin and Devon, as well as eight grandchildren. —