CHICAGO -- When the White Sox highly touted rookie starting pitcher Michael Kopech spoke last year at SoxFest concerning the great success of Patrick Mahomes II, his friend and one-time Texas high school rival, he referred to him as “the pitcher who also plays football.”

One year later, a smiling Kopech said his opinion has changed. Mahomes has posted 76 regular-season passing touchdowns against 17 interceptions over the past two seasons for Kansas City, earned the NFL’s Most Valuable Player Award last season and will be leading the Chiefs against the 49ers in Super Bowl LIV on Feb. 2.

“Yeah, he’s a football player,” Kopech said during an interview at Kopech’s Big Kut charity sweepstakes event Wednesday at the Ronald McDonald House in Chicago prior to SoxFest, which starts on Friday. “He’ll always be a baseball player in my mind.

“That’s the time I got to spend with him -- I got to interact with him, I got to compete with him. But to see what he’s done on the football field, breaking records as a rookie, just doing things that you wouldn’t think somebody that you grew up playing baseball with would have done, it’s remarkable to say the least.”

Kopech and Mahomes developed a competitive friendship as young baseball players at 8 or 9 years old. In a memorable game from March 2014, Kopech’s Mount Pleasant High School squad dropped a 2-1 non-conference decision to Mahomes and his Whitehouse team, played in front of countless Major League scouts.

According to various news reports, Mahomes threw a no-hitter, struck out 16 and touched 92-95 mph on the radar gun. Kopech reached 98 mph and struck out 12.

Baseball represents past history for Mahomes, who had eight touchdown passes without an interception during the AFC playoffs. Team success as found by Mahomes’ Chiefs represents something Kopech wants with the White Sox in the near future.

“In the back of our minds, we always kind of wanted to compete against each other at the highest level,” Kopech said. “Seeing him in football competing at the highest level is incredible. Winning at the highest level kind of motivates me to want to win at the highest level here, not that I needed much more motivation than we already have.

“With me not playing football, all I could hear was stories from my baseball teammates who also played football. They would tell me how incredible he was at football. I was like ‘Yeah, sure, sure. He throws 95.’ He was blessed in all three sports. He was a basketball player, too. He could have done anything he wanted to, and the fact he’s doing exactly what he wants to do is awesome.”

Even as Kopech gets ready for a return to the mound following Tommy John surgery in September 2018, he will find time to watch the Super Bowl. He didn’t really discuss a favorite NFL team, but Kopech will be supporting his former mound opponent.

“I’ll watch it,” Kopech said. “I would feel like a traitor if I wasn’t.

“I couldn’t be more proud of [him], just if nothing else from being from the same roots and kind of making it to what we all dream about making it to. Not only playing at the highest level, but winning at the highest level.”