Colorado: A History of the Centennial State, Fifth Edition

23. Sports

421 23 Living in a state that touts itself as the nation’s yearround playground has inspired Coloradans to focus on sports and recreation. By the early twenty-first century they could boast that Denver had more professional teams than any other city in the country. Baseball, basketball , football, hockey, outdoor and indoor lacrosse, rugby, and soccer teams played in six state-of-the-art metro-area stadiums—Broomfield’s Events Center, Coors Field in Denver, Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, Infinity Park in Glendale, and Denver’s Pepsi Center and Sports Authority Field at Mile High. Broncomania Broncomania has become the state’s major sports fever. The Broncos started playing in 1960 wearing vertically striped socks in mustard yellow and barnyard brown. Their performances looked almost as ugly as the socks. These newcomers to the American Football League started out with four wins, nine losses, and a tie. Despite enthusiastic fan support, the donkeys, as many critics called them, seemed to get worse every year. During the 1960s they regularly lost five games for every one they won. After ceremonially cremating the ugly socks in 1962, fans hoped for prettier performances; but in 1963 the Broncos sank to two wins, eleven losses, and one tie. The Sports have always been a part of life in Colorado. Through them we build powerful bonds to the land, to our communities and find strength and energy in ourselves.1 —James Whiteside, Colorado: a sports history, 1999 sports DOI: 10.5876/9781607322276:c23 chapter twenty-three 422 team had little to brag about until 1967, when they hired Floyd Little, an AllAmerican running back from Syracuse University. Little was little—just 5'10" and 195 pounds—but he was the first Bronco giant. He played for the team until 1975, leading professional football in rushing for six of those years—a performance that helped bring him induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2001. With Little in their offensive backfield, the Broncos—who became part of the National Football League (NFL) in 1970 when the American Football League merged with the NFL—finally had their first winning season in 1973, with seven wins, five losses, and two ties. They also played their first Monday night football game that year, tying their arch rivals, the Oakland Raiders, 23–23 in a thriller. Coloradans swelled with pride as television announcer Howard Cosell told a nationwide audience that Denver had long “been thirsting for national recognition and they got it tonight.”2 He also gushed, with some exaggeration, that every Bronco fan was wearing an orange-colored article of clothing, orange and blue having replaced the brown and yellow. Glorying in their fresh colors and a winning record, Bronco fans began buying bumper stickers asking “If God isn’t a Bronco fan, why are sunsets orange and blue?” Perhaps divine intervention and the prayers of devout fans brought a miracle to the Mile High City in 1977, when veteran NFL quarterback Craig Morton joined the team. Before Morton, the Broncos lacked a consistent quarterback. That same lucky year Broncos owner Gerald Phipps hired a new coach, Red Miller. Miller won respect after he got down on the line of scrimmage in practice to demonstrate blocking techniques. Even when a collision with monster tackle Claudie Minor resulted in a bloody gash on his left eye, Miller stayed on the field. Players took to a coach who would butt heads with them, bleeding or not. Morton and Miller took the team to their first Super Bowl. When the offense faltered, the aggressive “orange crush” defense not only stopped the enemy but also often forced turnovers and scored on some of them. The magical season came to a dismal end, however, in the 1978 Super Bowl showdown with the Dallas Cowboys, which the Bronocs lost 27–10. Despite the loss, Broncomania became embedded in Colorado. Orange Mad ness ruled. Rocky Mountain News and, later, Denver Post sportswriter Woodrow “Woody” Paige Jr. put it well: “The city, the state, the whole region, if you will, breathed Broncos. A religion existed. In Colorado everyone was a broncomaniac , win or lose.”3 Priests rescheduled masses around the Sunday ritual held in the high holy place of Mile High Stadium. Denver’s BMH Synagogue ordered sports 423 orange yarmulkes. If the Broncos were in the January NFL playoffs, attendance at the National Western Stock Show suffered...