A recent incident involving the Kansas City Chiefs football team is further evidence of how athletic officials and their legal experts work overtime to deal with silly matters while ignoring far more important issues.

Kansas City field goal-kicker Morten Andersen delivered the three points that gave the Chiefs their 10th victory for the season Sunday. Before Andersen took the field, K.C. coach Dick Vermeil told the kicker, a fellow wine connoisseur, that if he made the game-winning field goal, the coach would supply a rare bottle of wine, worth about $500. The implication was that the coach had access to such a bottle, would buy it and give it to the kicker. But Vermeil also could have meant he would make it possible for Andersen to acquire the nifty bit of vintage himself. He didn’t guarantee a gift.

Soon the National Football League brass stepped in to prevent any exchange, saying it amounted to remuneration not included in the standard contract between the Chiefs and the kicker. After hearing about the post-game discussion of the friendly and good-natured exchange, the NFL called to tell the Kansas City officials that offering “performance bonuses” not included in the official contract is verboten.

Vermeil was disgusted by the ruling but agreed to comply to make sure there would be no penalties.

It was a good-natured exchange between player and coach that certainly didn’t qualify as an exorbitant bonus in the world of NFL contracts. It’s the type of offer that adds to the color of pro football, but some nitpicker had to leap into the fray and enforce a mindless rule.

“We’ll have to wait until after the season to share a glass of wine at my house,” said the clearly perturbed Vermeil, noted for doing thoughtful things for his athletes. “I just can hardly believe this!” And neither can most other people who understand the thousands and even millions of dollars bandied around in the sport, legal and otherwise.

It would seem the NFL front office should be more concerned about curtailing the enormous injury tolls in the sport, the rising salaries for marginal athletes and coaches, the use of drugs, the steady rate of criminal and inappropriate activity by players and the growing tendency of the public to decline to pay huge sums for stadiums to which belabored taxpayers cannot afford to go.

The wine incident was merely a spontaneous exchange between a player and a coach, one that captured the fancy of fans.

It’s too bad that NFL headquarters had to turn a bottle of wine into a case of whine.