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Kansas City: Gaga for Gunther

Posted: Tuesday August 10, 1999 11:54 AM

This is the eighth in a series of postcards Sports Illustrated's Peter King will e-mail from his annual NFL training-camp tour.

Friday, Aug. 6

TEAM: Kansas City Chiefs

SITE: University of Wisconsin-River Falls, a spread-out branch campus in western Wisconsin, about a 45-minute drive east of the Twin Cities. The Chiefs work on three well-manicured grass fields, and this is where they practiced twice on Friday and were scheduled to have a controlled scrimmage Saturday against the New Orleans Saints.

PLAYER (OR COACH, IN THIS CASE) I SAW WHOM I REALLY LIKED: When I first heard new Kansas City coach Gunther Cunningham was supervising practices in which his players were whaling the living tar out of each other, I said: Uh-oh; this guy's going to wear out a veteran team before the season even starts. But it doesn't look like he's overdoing it. The workload is intense, but for much shorter practices than usual. He has had his team out for as short a practice time at 70 minutes, not the two-hour shifts the Chiefs were used to having under Marty Schottenheimer. No player likes camp, but it looks like Cunningham is putting his stamp of intensity on this team without burning the players out.

THE FOOD: The River Falls cafeteria is always a highlight of training camp because of one thing: The Zarda's Bar-b-q Sauce. I got the grilled chicken breast in black bean sauce, scraped the black beans off, and poured a load of Zarda' on the chicken. Add the boiled carrots and cubed potatoes, the Five Alive quasi-orange juice and two homemade sugar cookies, and you've got yourself the best meal on this tour so far.

CAMP ODDITIES: Not quite an oddity, but my favorite quote of the preseason so far comes from Saints coach Mike Ditka, and I have to pass it on. It has to do with his attitude about trading the thousand draft choices for Ricky Williams, and the criticism he's taken for overpaying in the deal. "If you're interested in competing for the Super Bowl," he said, "you might as well buy a horse." See why it's great to have Ditka on the beat? By the way, the Chiefs have a couple of interesting guys trying to revive careers in camp. Eugene Chung, the former Patriots first-rounder is here, as a backup center. Cris Dishman is here and probably will be a nickel back.

Dear NFL Junkie:

It's not often you see all-out war between two teams. If you were in River Falls on Friday, you saw it. And it was ugly.

The Chiefs and Saints got together here to practice twice on Friday, and they were scheduled to scrimmage Saturday. But in the aftermath of some fights, cheap shots and an incident in the afternoon where coaches had to break up what might have been a mass brawl in the locker room between the two teams, the Saturday scrimmage was canceled by mutual agreement.

Casualties? At least one. Saints corner Tyronne Drakeford broke an index finger in one of the morning brawls. In the morning there were four separate fights, the ugliest happening when Kansas City tackle Marcus Spears took off his helmet and began swinging it at any Saint in sight. Spears got booted out of practice then. Afterward, Cunningham went to the Saints' huddle and apologized. "I don't want that garbage happening on my team," he said, "and I don't condone it."

But there was significant bad blood from the morning practice, and it carried over to the afternoon. The Chiefs thought Saints tackle Kyle Turley took cheap shots against a couple of guys in the morning, and they set about trying to get even in the afternoon. "You started this s---!" Derrick Thomas yelled at Turley at one point. "It's your fault!" But all heck broke loose when Saints wideout Keith Poole got leveled going over the middle by K.C. safety Jerome Woods. A mouthpiece -- don't know whose it was -- went flying about 20 feet in the air, and bodies went flying into a pile, as angry players tried to get at the guys in the other jerseys.

Weird. Really weird. This was war. And one team tried to call out the other in the locker room afterward, and coaches had to step in again. It was best for everyone that the Saints get back on their four buses and head two hours back to LaCrosse. And Kyle Turley, if you ever find yourself in Kansas City, I'd bring a bodyguard.

More postcards: Cleveland | Detroit | Tampa Bay | Minnesota | Green Bay | Chicago | New Orleans

Check back soon for more Postcards from Camp. To send a question to Peter King's King's NFL Mailbag, click here.