Kansas on-brand. Krizz Kaliko on the rise. Coaching Patrick Mahomes. The week that was.

On brand, Kansas.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams says Kansas needs a brand. “When you go there, okay, you’re from Kansas. But New York has a brand,” he recently said.

He was apparently talking about New York City, which yes, has a brand: bad barbecue and worse football, for starters. Oh, and a $10 billion budget deficit.

But let’s not sink to Adams’ level with cheap insults. New York City is a great place to visit, and, with enough money, to live. We like New York.

Kansas? Yes, flatter than a pancake. But it’s open, relatively inexpensive, well-educated and energetic. It’s got good schools and improving transportation and extraordinary vistas and a balanced budget. It won’t need floating storm gates to protect against climate change.

Kansans are tired of wilted Oz references, so cross that off the list. College football is hit-or-miss. Hard red winter wheat? Aviation? The Little House on the Prairie? That big ball of string? Perhaps.

Here’s a better brand idea: To the stars through, um, opportunity. “When anything is going to happen in this country, it happens first in Kansas,” William Allen White once wrote. He was probably joking. But maybe not.

Adams’ backhanded insult wasn’t the first time Kansans have grimaced so the world could chuckle, and it won’t be the last. We’re tough enough to take it, which is also on-brand.

You know, maybe Kansas doesn’t really need a brand. Maybe it needs some rain, and a good harvest, and some luck on the college gridiron this weekend. Top that, New York.

Local talent blazing a solo path.

Kansas City rapper Krizz Kaliko is set to erase the underrated label he’s been wearing for most of the last 20 years, when he earned a reputation as an uber-talented but junior partner to famed rapper Tech N9ne. As Star reporter J.M. Banks writes this week, Kaliko launches his North American tour this month. With his own label, and a string of voice-over-animation credits to boot, Kaliko is ready to bring more of his own style of confessional lyrics and musicality to the world.

“I have always talked about my life and sang about my life,” Kaliko told Banks. “The biggest comment I get at meet-and-greets is how I saved their life because they were going to commit suicide. I have been at the brink of suicide at numerous occasions. So I go out and talk about what helps me.”

That sounds like a recipe for success that everyone can cheer for.

Spotlight Hunger

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson ordered the state Capitol and the governor’s mansion drenched in beautiful, orange lights last week to bring awareness to the need to combat hunger.

A great idea, but one that brought more than a few eye rolls. Just months earlier, the governor had passed a chance to feed children living in low income households. Oops!

“Light shows are great… but taking care of our kids is more important.” House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfiel Democrat told the Missouri Independent on Tuesday. She called the state’s decision “shameful.”

Missouri, and Parson in particular, was widely criticized for being the only state that did not opt in to the federal summer program to offer hungry children grab-and-go meals, instead limiting the meals to those who ate them on-site. But school food service folks at the time had praised the program because families could feed not only their hungry school kids but their younger kids hungry at home.

Parson’s lights are pretty though.

The horror of coaching Patrick Mahomes

On Sunday, Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy drew the ire of Chiefs fans for a brief verbal spat with wunderkind quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

Oh, the horror.

Yes, the Chiefs’ all-world quarterback is allowed to be coached. Or even told no, as he was Sunday during the team’s game in Indianapolis.

Footage of Mahomes’ animated confrontation with Bieniemy over the coach’s decision to play it safe before halftime was hyped up in the media and online. The dust-up was much ado about nothing, head coach Andy Reid said after the Chiefs’ 20-17 loss. He’s right.

Coaching a talented and popular player like Mahomes isn’t easy. But great players such as Mahomes need to be challenged. Forget what the internet says. Both men were just doing their jobs.