Breaking News
Home / News / Fifty years a long time to wait, but Victor Ortiz of Pecos grew up a Kansas City Chiefs fan and finally had a chance to celebrate after Sunday’s 30-21 comeback win over San Francisco in Miami

Fifty years a long time to wait, but Victor Ortiz of Pecos grew up a Kansas City Chiefs fan and finally had a chance to celebrate after Sunday’s 30-21 comeback win over San Francisco in Miami

By Arnie Leshin
Arnie Leshin

Pecos’ Victor Ortiz was young in 1970, too young to know much about the final National Football League vs. American Football League professional football game that the Kansas City Chiefs won, 23-7, over the Minnesota Vikings at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.

The following year, it became the National Football Conference and the first official Super Bowl when the then-Baltimore Colts defeated the Dallas Cowboys, 16-13, at the Orange Bowl in Miami.
“It was like this,” Ortiz said before the Chiefs took the field Sunday against the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl played at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, “I was a kid and one of my close friends was a Raider fan, so I decided to be a Chiefs fan.
“It was just fun because we were both too young to follow professional sports, but in 1972 I traveled by train with some family and friends to the Pro Bowl in Kansas City, and I remember it was a long ride that must have been a few days.”
So when KC won its third straight playoff game over the Tennessee Titans to return to the event for the first time in 50 years, Ortiz said he’d been a Chiefs fan for 50 years. Now that’s cool, as long as he can take long waits.
So no doubt he was ecstatic when his team came from behind once again to plant a 31-20 defeat on the Niners in Super Bowl LIV.
“First it was over Houston, then Tennessee, and now,” Ortiz said. “Unbelievable, what a team.”
He was even younger in 1967 when Kansas City lost, 35-10, to the Green Bay Packers in what was called “The First World Championship”, and was played at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
The following year, it brought Green Bay back to dispose of Oakland, 33-14, in what was labeled Super Bowl II  and the AFL New York Jets guaranteed an upset over the 17-point favorite NFL Colts, and it turned into a stunning 16-7 Jets’ win in the Orange Bowl.
By then it was officially the Super Bowl, which was named that by Kansas City Chiefs’ owner and founder of the AFL Lamar Hunt. Hank Stram was the KC head coach and he was the first to don a microphone for the tilt.
But imagine just how long it took these Chiefs to return. It was the fourth season now for head coach Andy Reid, who was playing his 222nd game Sunday, and the winningest active head coach after being head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, and who was still seeking his first Super Bowl title.
Once, he brought Philly to the Super Bowl and it lost. When it did win in 2018 over the New England Patriots, he was already a chief.
Sunday, he appeared calm on the sidelines, but he wanted to finally have the Gatorade poured over him, to finally hoist the championship
trophy, to hug his players, his friends, his family, and wave to the KC fans that were still celebrating from the stands.
Reid has always been known as a nice man, a player’s coach, but serious in his coaching role, but this was his time to show his emotions, and did, but was calm and relaxed when being interviewed.
He once said “Pro football, it’s like nuclear warfare, there are no winners, only survivors.”
After losing in the one Super Bowl he coached while with the Eagles, he said that he knew he was getting into a high-risk, high profile profession, so I’ve adopted a philosophy I never wavered from.
“It’s like a cancelled check,” he said. “Today is cash on the line, and tomorrow is a promissory note.”
San Francisco had already won five Super Bowls and was hungry for another after last hoisting the trophy in 2007. It wanted to tie New England and Pittsburgh with a sixth Super Bow.
But like the Texans and Titans, it blew a lead against Reid’s team. It was up by 10 points when the Chiefs rallied with back-to-back touchdowns in what became habit-forming with the KC team. The first TD came with 2:44 remaining, and the second with 1:12 left.
The late Lamar Hunt’s widow and son were right in the middle of the celebration, both giving hugs and telling of what this would have meant to Lamar, whose AFL lasted only 10 years, and in that time his Chiefs won the title twice, in 1966 over the Buffalo Bills, 31-7, and in 1969 17-7 over the Oakland Raiders, which put Victor Ortiz one up on his childhood friend.
Former Kansas City quarterback Joe Montana, who at the age of 37 was traded from the 49ers after winning two Super Bowls, was there, but sat in a private box with former quarterbacks Joe Theisman, Doug Flute, Troy Aiken and Dan Marino.
And the stadium, which has been through about a dozen different names, was a picturesque site with a variety of dazzling lights all around it, with Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers spotlighted in front, at the 50-yard line it said Miami Dolphins, and with an announced crowd of 67,435.
And with the Dolphins’ Harvey Greene, the best darn media director in pro sports after being in that same role with the NBA Cleveland Cavaliers and the Major League Baseball New York Yankees, being the main man handling the press coverage, and that must have been a 5-star hit.
The Most Valuable was KC quarterback Patrick Mahomes, at 22 the youngest to ever win this. He had a negative first half but again engineered a gutsy comeback when it counted most. His team was down 20-10 and scored 21 unanswered points in the final quarter.

Check Also

God’s Encouraging Word of the day

“Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” 1 Corinthians 10:31 Since God …