LARNED — Pop music fans will remember a hit song by The Police, “Every Breath You Take.”  
One verse of the lyrics went, “Every Single day, Every word you say, Every game you play, Every night you stay, I’ll be watching you.”  
It could be said about our Kansas City Royals.
“I’ll be watching you.”  
Heck, the WHOLE COUNTRY is watching you!
For every game the Royals have played since the end of the regular season, they’ve made over a million dollars for each game.
Obviously, that is money that even the most optimistic of the Royals’ Brass didn’t plug into their budget.
This little postseason run into the World Series could add as much as a tidy $15 million to the bottom line.
Can that buy more good players for the future?
We can only hope so.
Let’s all hope that Royals’ Chairman David Glass doesn’t stuff all of this extra cash into his mattress.
This year, the Royals took a chance and played the season with a $92 million payroll, 17th-highest in the major leagues.
Compare that to the money spent by the Yankees and the Dodgers.
On second thought, let’s don’t. The difference is staggering.
Though the Royals fans were staggered by the first-inning antics of the Giants, their enthusiasm is noteworthy for this entire season.
The Royals drew nearly two million fans this year, a major achievement in a small market for a team expected to be stuck somewhere in the middle of the standings.
The Royals are expected to lose some of their biggest stars, such as James Shields and perhaps Billy Butler.
Chairman Glass and general manager Dayton Moore must be willing to spend some of the largesse of this fine season on purchasing key players for another run in 2015.
Two million Royals fans deserve nothing less.
We’ll all “Be watching you.”
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I’ve already heard more than I want to about how the Southeastern Conference is THE BEST football conference in the country.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I DO know this: You can’t make that judgment at this time of the season.
A quick look at the non-conference schedules of Mississippi, Mississippi State, Alabama and other SEC powerhouses shows that Bill Snyder must have made out their non-conference schedules.
Creampuffs!  
Let’s wait until the SEC teams have actually played each other until we have to hear that maybe four of them deserve to be in the four-team national playoffs!
The SEC has too many teams causing a crazy system of scheduling where several of the top teams do not play each other.
Take a turn like the Big 12 does.
Everybody plays each other.
THAT is how you determine a TRUE champion and determine who should play for a national championship.
Until then, it’s all just cheerleading, thumping the conference drum and athletic politics!
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CHALK TALK — OK, so now Kansas State has WON a game they should have lost (Oklahoma) and they’ve LOST a game they should have won (Auburn). This week they win one they should win. Wildcats 30, Texas 17 ... How ‘bout those Panthers? It was great to see the offense step up and match the defense in that solid outing against Newton. A Great Bend win over Salina Central doesn’t look so far- fetched now! ... Injury problems are plaguing the Larned Indians, especially on offense. Still, they have enough firepower and defense to take down Hugoton. Larned 20, Hugoton 7 ... Hoisington, meanwhile, keeps on rolling with a 35-7 punishing of Sterling. ... T’ain’t nobody thinks playing the Chiefs is an easy game anymore. Even more so than last year, these Chiefs EXPECT to win when they walk on that field. What a deal it would have been if the Cardinals would have held up their end of the bargain and got into the World Series against the Royals. THEN, this Sunday we would have the St. Louis Rams at Arrowhead and probably the Royals in St. Louis for a MEGA I-70 Series! By the way, Chiefs 33, Rams 21.

Charles Tabler is a contributing writer from Larned.