The University of Denver successfully clinched their 10th NCAA hockey title this past weekend, making them the most successful team in collegiate hockey history. The NBA champions as of right now are the Denver Nuggets. After taking home the championship in 2022, the Avalanche are primed to make a significant playoff push this year. The Broncos and the Rockies are another team.
The Denver Broncos have been the best team in Denver for as long as I have lived, perched on a mile-high mountain. There they are, right there with the Colorado Rockies, one of the greatest jokes in professional sports. How did the Broncos end up playing alongside a club that doesn’t want to win or field a roster that can possibly compete?
After the team’s ninth straight season without making the playoffs, the billionaire owners decided to hike the pricing of season tickets for season ticket holders. This is a classic Monfort move meant to extract as much money as possible from the supporters for a much below-average product. Rather than making improvements to the squad, the Walton-Penners and the Monforts decide to spend their money on material enhancements like party decks and ludicrous private clubs like Club 1977. Even if Mile High’s new scoreboard is gorgeous, it doesn’t really matter if everyone leaves in the third quarter due to yet another blowout.
Modern stadiums and team apparel are great, but the product that plays on the field is what ownership really has to get hands-on involved with. It’s very probable that after Super Bowl 50, Broncos Country will experience ten years of losing. Let’s put more emphasis on winning and less on the extraneous things, like milking the supporters for more cash for a shoddy product.
Colorado has had a great deal of success in sports these days, so people’s tolerance for incompetence and attention span aren’t as short as they were in the 1960s and early 1970s, when things were regularly as poor. Hockey, basketball, and collegiate hockey have all flourished alongside the deteriorating disaster that is the Broncos. There is more fierce competition than ever for viewers’ attention. The Broncos are in the race to join the Rockies as the laughingstock of professional sports if they don’t focus more on their team and their fan base. Heck, we could have arrived already.
