KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Robert Kraft was on a business trip in the early 1990s when he popped into Arrowhead Stadium for a Chiefs game.

He was smitten by the aroma of the barbecue wafting from the parking lots; impressed by the passionate, red-clad sellout crowd; and infatuated with the entire Arrowhead ambience.

Kraft, a self-professed sports nut and New England Patriots season-ticket holder since 1971, decided he wanted in the NFL.

So in 1994, Kraft, founder of an international paper and packaging company, took the plunge. He spent a then-record $172 million for a moribund franchise that was on the brink of moving to St. Louis after going through two owners and three coaches in the previous six years while winning 19 of 80 games.

Ten years later, Kraft will return to Kansas City for Monday night’s game against the Chiefs as operator of the NFL’s model franchise.

The Patriots are setting the standard for the rest of the league by proving a team can win Super Bowls and still be fiscally responsible.

When the Patriots won their second Super Bowl in three years last season, their payroll was tied for 23rd in the league. They opened this season ranked 25th in salaries at $81,695,050 and extended their winning streak to a league-record 21 games dating to last season before losing three weeks ago at Pittsburgh.

While teams must stay within the $80.6 million salary cap, the cap is merely a bookkeeping tool. Teams exceed it by signing free agents to contracts with multimillion-dollar signing bonuses and performance bonuses that can be prorated against the cap for the length of the contract.

This year, Washington owner Daniel Snyder has spent nearly $130 million in cash for a team that is 3-6. In fact, the teams with the five highest payrolls all have losing records, including the 3-6 Chiefs, who are fifth in payroll at $97,154,927, according to the NFL Players Association.

“As far as spending goes, if you look at five-year cycles, in the end everybody pretty much spends the same amount,” Kraft said. “Ownership can mess things up as well as help things. All you’ve got to do is look around the league and see where people have been successful and where they haven’t. We don’t want to go up one year and down the next year and have these extremes.

“We spend up to the cap every year. I credit coach Bill Belichick for this. There is a philosophy, there is a system in place that does have a value scale, and we try to stay within that.”

Don’t get the idea that Kraft is just pocketing his profits. After his experience at Arrowhead and other NFL stadiums, Kraft realized he needed to replace Foxboro Stadium, which was basically an overgrown high school facility.

He invested $325 million of his family’s money into building state-of-the-art, 68,756-seat Gillette Stadium, which opened in 2002. It is one of three privately financed stadiums in the NFL, along with Miami and Washington, and its revenues have helped increase the value of the team to $861 million, fourth in the league, according to Forbes magazine.

“I’ll never forget the first time being in Kansas City and just seeing what an experience it was,” Kraft recalled. “One of the teams I looked at, and one of the models, was the Kansas City Chiefs. It’s not a (large) metropolis, but we saw an opportunity, similar to what’s been done in Kansas City, to be able to get the excitement of the NFL in this region.

“I have four sons, and I figured that’s a great way to anchor the family in the community. This was my dream. We took a huge risk. But I’m happy we did.”

Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, who is looking for a solution to update or replace 32-year-old Arrowhead Stadium, may now start emulating Kraft.

“He’s a very good businessman in the things he’s done,” Hunt said. “Bob wants to do things within the structure of the league. A lot of the newer owners have taken the posture that they took a big risk in purchasing their team, which they did, and therefore they … want to remake the things that have been successful in the league.

“They are a model franchise. They’ve accomplished the building of a very fine stadium in a market that had stadium difficulties for 40 years, or since the franchise started, and they won two Super Bowls, which is the artistic side.”

Kraft, 63, is not a meddler such as Snyder or Dallas’ Jerry Jones. Like Hunt, who delegates football decisions to his football people, Kraft leaves the personnel decisions to Belichick, a meticulous strategist, and to general manager Scott Pioli, who makes astute draft picks and unearths second-tier free agents who embrace Belichick’s no-frills philosophy that disdains a star system.

“There’s no magic formula,” Belichick said. “It’s trying to understand what you want a guy to do and how you want him to do it, and trying to find the right person to fit that particular role on your team.”

New England has been so successful identifying talent that of the Patriots’ first- and second-round draft picks since 2001, six are starters, two play significant minutes, one is a backup and the other is on injured reserve. In 2000, New England found a quarterback named Tom Brady in the sixth round who has won two Super Bowl MVP awards.

Not to mention veterans such as linebackers Roman Phifer, Mike Vrabel and Don Davis and safety Rodney Harrison who were cast off by other teams, yet found meaningful roles and earned Super Bowl rings in New England.

“Star coaches . . . star players, by themselves, can’t win,” Kraft said. “Football is the ultimate team sport. If everyone isn’t pulling for everyone else, and if they’re interested in how many receptions or how many carries, or how many tackles or how many sacks … if that karma and feeling isn’t felt throughout the locker room, you have real problems.”

New England’s team concept permeates the Patriots so thoroughly that they had just three Pro Bowlers last year-defensive end Richard Seymour, cornerback Ty Law and linebacker Willie McGinest-and McGinest was an injury replacement. The Chiefs sent nine players to the Pro Bowl.

“We have a couple of big-name guys, but we don’t have as many as most teams,” wide receiver David Givens said. “We have a lot of guys on this team who are very unselfish. We don’t care about being that one big-name guy, being that flamboyant, loud, obnoxious talker. You don’t need that to win games.

“. . . We’ve won two Super Bowls without all that stuff. Our coaches do a good job of keeping everybody level-headed and not letting anybody get out of the realm of reality. You’re a football player and here to do a job.”

Another common thread that runs throughout the organization is that Kraft demands high-character individuals. The Patriots raised some eyebrows last spring when they traded a second-round pick to Cincinnati for running back Corey Dillon, who had a reputation as a clubhouse cancer.

Dillon was simply tired of playing for losing teams. He took a pay cut and restructured his contract to play for the Patriots. He’s fourth in the NFL in rushing with 900 yards and has been a model citizen.

“With me, it’s first of all having good people, and that means people you’re comfortable having at your dinner table,” said Kraft. “The one thing I said when I hired Bill Belichick is, “You can do whatever you want in personnel; just don’t bring any bad apples here to New England.’

“If I need thugs and hoodlums or bad guys to be able to win, then I’m going to get out of the business. If they come into this community and do something… this team carries my family name, and it’s an embarrassment to me and my family personally.

“I’m proud of the people Bill has brought into this organization.”

Kraft took some heat when he dismissed coach Pete Carroll after the 1999 season and sent a first-round draft choice to the New York Jets for the rights to hire Belichick. Belichick joined the Patriots as Bill Parcells’ assistant head coach in 1996 when the Patriots went to the Super Bowl and accompanied Parcells to the Jets the following year.

The Patriots went 6-10 under Belichick in 2000 and were 1-3 in 2001 after quarterback Drew Bledsoe, the franchise’s centerpiece player, suffered a chest injury in week two. But Brady led the club to an improbable run capped by an upset of two-touchdown favorite St. Louis in Super Bowl XXXVI.

“We were 7-13 at one point,” Kraft said of Belichick’s start with the Patriots, “and a lot of people were calling for my head and his head. We stayed the course, and fortunately we’ve had some good results since then.”

The Patriots also have been blessed with some good fortune. New England might not have made it out of its first playoff game in 2001 had it not been for the infamous “Tuck Rule.” Brady appeared to have lost a fumble at the end of regulation against Oakland, but the call was overturned and ruled an incompletion. New England went on to send the game into overtime and win.

Because the controversial play occurred with less than 2 minutes remaining, it was reviewed by the press-box official. Had it occurred with more than 2 minutes left, the Patriots couldn’t have challenged because they were out of timeouts.

“You have to have a good organization and thorough planning, but then you need some good luck and fortune,” Kraft said. “Part of that is hopefully having your people be prepared for what to do in certain situations; part of it is just force majeure , so-called acts of God, or good luck.

“We’re mindful how lucky we’ve been.”