I shocked my wife the other night.

I said “no” when she asked me if I wanted another beer.

Ha. I joke. My wife is too smart to ask a stupid question.

No, what I did was tell my wife that she could change the channel on the TV in our family room.

“But you’re watching a football game,” my wife said.

“That’s OK,” I said. “I don’t need to watch the rest of the game.”

My wife immediately ran over to where I was sitting and placed her hand on my forehead.

“Hmmm, no fever,” she said. “Must be some sort of stroke.”

My wife is hilarious.

One of the reasons I told my wife that I didn’t want to watch the rest of the football game was because it was an exhibition game. See, exhibition games are — follow me here — exhibitions. Basically, what the morons who run the NFL are saying when they stage an exhibition game is, “Look. This is an exhibit of an NFL game. Granted, it’s not an exhibit of a good NFL game, but it is an NFL game.”

Most fans realize that, and like me, they take a mild (at best) interest in exhibition games.

The exhibition game that I was only mildly interested in on Thursday night featured the Kansas City Chiefs against the Houston Texans. By the way, you know you’ve run out of names for sports teams when you just use the name of the state in which the team is located.

It would be like calling the Kansas City Chiefs the Kansas City Missourians. Or the Chicago Cubs the Chicago Illinoisans.

The other reason I was mildly interested in the exhibition game was because the Chiefs have a new quarterback that everyone is excited about.

But I’m uneasy with the new quarterback. I thought the Chiefs already had a perfectly good quarterback, but they threw him away so the new quarterback could play.

OK, technically the Chiefs didn’t throw the perfectly good quarterback away; they traded him to the Washington … I’m going to call them the … D.C.ers. But still.

It’s not that I have anything against the new Chiefs quarterback. From what I’ve seen, he is very good. He probably is even better than the quarterback the Chiefs threw away. But, and I say this as a lifelong Kansas City Chiefs fan, we’re talking about the Chiefs here.

Let’s face it — things don’t always work out when it comes to the Kansas City Chiefs’ decisions, and it doesn’t matter who is making the decisions.

I’m not blaming the current Chiefs decision-makers here. I’m blaming Hank Stram. I loved Hank Stram. He was a great football coach, and I used to love listening to him call Monday night football games on the radio with the great Jack Buck.

But I think that in 1969, the NFL gods came to Hank and said, “Look, we’ll let you win the Super Bowl this season, but after that, almost every decision the Chiefs ever make will be wrong.” And Hank said, “Let me think about that for a second. (One-second pause.) DEAL.”

Can you think of a better explanation?

To be honest, I don’t know why I was even mildly interested in the exhibition game. If the new Chiefs quarterback did a great job, it really wouldn’t mean anything because — again, follow me here — it was an exhibition game. And if he sucked, it really wouldn’t matter because — as I think I’ve made clear — it was an exhibition game.

As it was, the new quarterback did OK. Not great. Not horrible. But OK, which for a Chiefs decision was about all you could hope for.

I hope the new Chiefs quarterback has a great season and leads them to a Super Bowl victory. But I don’t know.

What’s the statute of limitations on deals with the NFL gods?