By: Jon Sham

Howard County Executive Ken Ulman announced Tuesday afternoon that for the next week, he has banned the use of the word “chief.”

For now, the two chiefs on his payroll — Police Chief Bill McMahon and Fire Chief Bill Goddard — will be called Bill #1 and Bill #2, respectively.

If you haven’t caught on yet, this ploy is an effort by Howard County to express its pride for the Baltimore Ravens as they go on to face the Kansas City C#!@%s on Sunday in the NFL playoff Wild Card round.

“I have said it for a long time – Howard County is where Maryland comes together, and nothing brings us together like the Ravens,” said Ulman in a written statement. “We want to make sure the Ravens and all of their fans know that purple passion cannot be contained at the Baltimore border – it’s all over the state.”

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Watch video from the War Memorial Plaza painting

Earlier Tuesday, Baltimore City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake joined the Ravens’ painting crew in spraying the team logo in the grass at War Memorial Plaza.

The mayor, dressed in a Ray Lewis jacket and jeans bearing the Ravens logo on each back pocket, took hold of the sprayer and helped the crew outline the logo on a giant tarp.

“This year, to show our pride, we are going to ‘Go Purple’ by firing up the purple lights and painting the town purple,” she said in a statement. “No team in the NFL will have as much hometown support as our Ravens.”

The painters also went to Federal Hill Tuesday to leave their mark, and purple light fixtures are being installed around the city.

Ulman also said the Howard County government’s George Howard Building in Ellicott City and the Gateway Building in Columbia will have a purple glow cast on them as long as the Ravens stay alive in the playoffs.

But as for stripping words from our vocabulary for football’s sake, let’s just hope we don’t have to play New England at some point. It might be a little more difficult to convince the region to stop being American patriots for a week.