Kansas City king.(new Kansas City Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil)

New Chiefs coach DICK VERMEIL is being hailed by fans as a genius and magician rolled into one, but he faces the daunting challenge of delivering an immediate turnaround

This is something new. You wouldn't think there would be anything new left for Dick Vermeil, who has been around football for more than 40 years, who coached high school and junior college and college and pros, who won a Rose Bowl and lost a Super Bowl and won a Super Bowl at different times in his life, who famously quit coaching for 14 years because he felt burned out.

But this is something completely new.

In Kansas City, they're calling him a savior.

"It alarms me," Vermeil says. "I've never been through anything like this before. People have all been very warm, very supportive, it's been very nice. But I don't want to mislead or disillusion people. I'm not a miracle worker."

Not a miracle worker? Forget that. In Kansas City, they've got Vermeil pegged as some combination of Anne Sullivan, Moses, St. Nicholas and Bill Parcells. Understand, Kansas City is the hungriest football city in America. The Chiefs have led the NFL in attendance five of the past seven seasons. More than 10,000 people linger on the season-ticket waiting list. Yet the Chiefs have not made the playoffs three of the last four years, and they have not reached a Super Bowl in more than 30. A certain desperation surrounds this team and this city. People want a winner.

So the hiring of Dick Vermeil has set off a kind of frenzy. Kansas City folks saw firsthand what Vermeil did four hours to the east on 1-70, in St. Louis, where he built the Rams into Super Bowl champions and a national phenomenon. Envy raged in Kansas City. Michael McCambridge, a St. Louis-based author who grew up in Kansas City, summed up those feelings last year when he wrote: "When you've suffered for a team like I have--for more than 30 years of ups and downs and agonizing near misses--it's a little hard to sit back and politely applaud while a city that is barely on a first-name basis with its football team takes the fast lane straight to the Super Bowl."