President George Bush, on his way to political rallies in nearby Hudson, Wis., and St. Paul, Minn., had his bus caravan detour to River Falls in order to visit the Chiefs. The President spent some 30 minutes with the team, much to the delight of Bush-Cheney supporter Carl Peterson.

"Let's hope that in early winter, like in February, you're where you're supposed to be and we're where we're supposed to be and we can do this again," Peterson said of the traditional White House visit made by the Super Bowl winter.

Coach Dick Vermeil, who met Bush at a political rally in Pennsylvania in 2000, decided against making the Presidential visit a mandatory team activity.

"We probably have some Democrats on the team," he noted.

The head coach, however, doesn't appear to be one of them. Asked if he would invite Democrat challenger John Kerry to address his team if the opportunity arose, Vermeil chose not to give the politically correct answer.

"Not really," he said with a smile.

--The President appeared much more relaxed in the presence of NFL players than did league president Paul Tagliabue upon addressing the Chiefs two weeks previously in Mankato, Minn.

Of course, Bush hadn't taken a backhanded slap at the KC defense as Tagliabue did inadvertently before the Super Bowl -- a statement the commissioner chose not to retract or even joke about during his talk with the team.

The former Texas governor even sought out Lone Star native and former Longhorn star running back Priest Holmes.

"He walked up and said, 'Priest Holmes, I remember you when you were in high school,'" Vermeil reported. "He's a Texas guy. Everybody in Texas knows Priest Holmes."

Holmes, whose father is a reservist currently stationed in harm's way in Iraq, said he'd supported the President since the days when Bush used to jog on a University of Texas track.

"He said he was glad to see that my father was doing well," Holmes reported. "Basically, he said that our troops are going to return home safely."

QUOTE TO NOTE
"If anybody is going to judge a football team in the preseason, I'd like to take their bets. That's ridiculous. You play so much of a (personnel) mix in the preseason. The first team went out there and really played well, then we had a backup player make a mistake and that kind of crushed our confidence. You have to keep all of those things in mind." -- Gunther Cunningham, on the rush to judgment on the state of Kansas City's defense following one preseason showing.