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Once colleagues in Kansas City, Al Saunders and Marty Schottenheimer now compete in the AFC West: Saunders as the Chiefs' offensive coordinator, Schottenheimer as head coach of the Chargers. They're still friends, and so are their respective wives, Karen and Pat. The couples met up after Sunday's regular-season finale at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium, and Saunders offered up his best wishes for the New Year for the Schottenheimers.

Saunders' wish: for Marty to finally experience the feeling of being the best. "I said, 'Pat, I hope you get a diamond for this year's anniversary, and I hope it's on a Super Bowl ring,' " Saunders said.

How nice, except that Saunders, who seems like a sweetheart of a guy, probably says that to all the ladies. Well, maybe not all, just three other first ladies of football: Kaye Cowher, Lauren Dungy, and Lia Edwards. His heart is torn among several loves.

With the Chiefs at home for the playoffs, Saunders is in fan mode, and there's a one-in-three chance that his team wins it all. He has a rooting interest in four: the Chargers, Colts, Jets, and Steelers.

"Whomever of the four wins the Super Bowl, I'm rooting for that guy," Saunders said of the quartet of AFC head coaches (Schottenheimer, Pittsburgh's Bill Cowher, Indianapolis' Tony Dungy and the Jets' Herman Edwards) in pursuit of their first championship. "I want to see one of those guys get a ring.

"I want so badly for Marty or Tony or Bill -- Herm's got plenty more years, he'll get one -- but I'd like to see the older guys (do it). I'd love to see Tony get it because of what they did in Tampa. That's probably a bad thing to say. And I'd love for Marty to get it because he's been so close and I know how much it means to him."

Cowher, Dungy, and Edwards all coached, along with Saunders, under Schottenheimer on what were all-star staffs in Kansas City in the early 1990s. Schottenheimer gave Cowher and Edwards their first NFL coaching jobs. Now, Schottenheimer and his disciples have accomplished something unique.

Four head coaches formerly of the same staff leading teams to 10-win seasons and the postseason in the same campaign in the same conference is a first.

"You certainly enjoy people that you've been around and people that you care about having success," Schottenheimer said. "I think the one common thread that you find in them is that none of them were particularly top players. Herman, in fact, may have been the best of the group because he was a starter in Philadelphia for a long time. But they were guys that knew the game, understood the game, had great communication skills and they were always great guys to have on your side."

Many successful staffs have produced coaching trees. Most recently there's the Walsh Tree, the Parcells Tree, the Holmgren Tree, the Belichick Tree. However, Schottenheimer's Tree is as healthy as any, and right now its fruit is freshest.

Schottenheimer's career regular-season record is 177-117-1 during 18½ seasons with the Browns, Chiefs, Redskins, and Chargers. Cowher is 130-77-1 in 13 years with the Steelers. Dungy: 88-56 in nine years with the Bucs and Colts. Edwards: 35-29 in four with the Jets. Combined, over 45½ seasons, they've posted a record of 430-279-1, for an aggregate winning percentage of .605, with a total of 31 playoff appearances.

They spent the 1990 and '91 seasons together in Kansas City. Cowher, having come over with Schottenheimer from Cleveland in '89, was the team's defensive coordinator/linebackers coach, Dungy coached the defensive backs, and Edwards was a scout who also served as an assistant to Dungy. In those two seasons, the Chiefs went 11-5 and 10-6, respectively. The '90 season was the franchise's best in 21 years.

The band started to break up in '92, when Cowher succeeded Chuck Noll as head coach in Pittsburgh (where, coincidentally, Dungy had worked under Knoll for eight years before going to Kansas City) and Dungy joined Dennis Green's staff in Minnesota.

Schottenheimer promoted Edwards to defensive backs coach, a position he held until 1996, when he went to Tampa Bay to be Dungy's assistant head coach/defensive backfield coach.

As for Schottenheimer, he stayed in K.C. for another three years until after the '99 campaign, when a 7-9 record spelled the end of his tenure as el jefe of the Chiefs.

But for those two seasons, Schottenheimer had the future leaders of three franchises answering to him. Three driven ex-NFL players. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in those defensive staff meetings.

"That was probably the most fun I've had coaching," said Dungy, whose Colts play the Broncos this weekend. "Bill had a very good system. We had some great players, guys who practiced hard. It was seeing something come together. Kansas City was kind of waiting for a winning team, and watching that team getting better and win, seeing the whole thing happen, for all of us that went on as head coaches, you saw how the whole thing should happen and how it should grow."

Edwards' Jets visit Schottenheimer's Chargers in the first round, and should Indy take care of business at home against Denver, the winner of the Chargers-Jets tilt will travel to Pittsburgh to face Cowher and the Steelers.

Games between these coaches have an intra-squad scrimmage feel to them. "Dungy Ball" and "Cowher Power" are nothing but variations of "Marty Ball." Schottenheimer teams traditionally have strong running games, stingy defenses, and are near the top of the league in turnover ratio. Cowher and Edwards teams are built the same way, as were Dungy's Tampa teams. He's playing a different game now, though, with Peyton Manning.

But the core philosophies remain the same. Dungy's Colts led the league in turnover differential this year at plus-19. Second: the Jets, at plus-17. Third: the Chargers, plus-15. The Steelers tied for fifth at plus-11. Rushing offense: The Steelers finished second, the Jets third, Chargers sixth, and Colts 15th. Run defense: Steelers were first, Chargers third and Jets fifth.

"They have the ability to adjust," said Saunders, Schottenheimer's assistant head coach/receivers coach in K.C. "The Chargers are playing pretty good on offense, and that's not very typical of Marty's teams. The Colts are like a 'Star Wars' offense. Herm's team is not as strong this year on offense, but they're running the ball real well. Bill's team is relying on the defense, which they'll always do, but the last couple of years they've been very good offensively. One thing that remains constant through their offensive philosophy is they will run the ball."

You can try to run them out, and you might succeed, but you'll never run them over. Each has had to navigate through tough times, but they've done so successfully by never straying off course. Schottenheimer, after a 4-12 season last year, was on the hot seat from the start of the season. Now, after going 12-4, he's a leading candidate for coach of the year. His primary competition will come from Cowher, whose Steelers rebounded from a 6-10 season to become the first team in conference history to go 15-1.

	“	I want so badly for Marty or Tony or Bill -- Herm's got plenty more years, he'll get one -- but I'd like to see the older guys (do it). I'd love to see Tony get it because of what they did in Tampa.”
		—Chiefs offensive coordinator Al Saunders

Edwards' Jets were 6-10, too, last year, and missed the playoffs for the first time in his brief tenure in New York. His team also has done a 180, and Edwards is the first coach in team history with three playoff appearances in four years. Dungy has landed on his feet in Indy after Tampa Bay showed him the door just before dinner, even though it was Dungy who set the table for the Bucs' Super Bowl championships two years ago.

"It's the ability to know what you believe in and the stubbornness to stick to it," Dungy said. "I'm that way and all three of those guys are, too. They know very much what they believe in, they know how they want to win, and no matter what happens, they're not going to veer off course. That's one of the things I did learn from Marty working for him, and I'm sure the other two guys did as well."

"We learned a lot from Marty," said Edwards, who is closer to Dungy than the others, similar to Cowher and Schottenheimer's relationship. "He understood how he was going to try to win, and he made sure the players understood. You have to have some conviction behind you, so when things are going bad, you don't change, just stay with what you do. You can't let the outside forces all of a sudden force you to change. There's going to be some storms. You gotta weather the storms, and if you can do it and obviously win as you're weathering storms, eventually you'll have some success and build something, and that's what he was able to do in Kansas City."

The knock against all these guys is that they've been unable to win a championship. They're a combined 17-27 in the playoffs, with only Cowher having made it to the Super Bowl. Schottenheimer lost two AFC title games with Cleveland and a third with the Chiefs. Cowher has lost four AFC title games, three at home. Dungy has two conference title game losses on his otherwise impressive résumé, including last year's at New England.

Odds are one of the four will break through this year and get that elusive ice. Whoever of the four survives the longest in the AFC won't just be coaching for himself. They're coaching for one another. Just like back in the day.

Michael Smith is a senior writer for ESPN.com.