SUPER BOWL XXIV : SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS 55 DENVER BRONCOS 10 : Compulsion Out of Control : Broncos: They desperately need someone to stop them before they are leveled again.

Terry Bradshaw’s a dumb guy, right? D-U-M-B. Yeah, Terry, that’s with a B. You know what they always used to say about Bradshaw. Passed with class, just couldn’t pass a class.

Well, the dumb guy opened his mouth earlier this week after looking over the 49ers and the Broncos and predicted, “This sucker could be as bad as 55-3.”

This sucker was as bad as 55-10. And if not for a bogus pass interference call in the San Francisco end zone, Bradshaw would have hit this sucker right on the dot.

D-O-T.

In fact, Super Bowl XXIV made a lot of people look smart.

Everyone, basically, except the Broncos, who were warned, who were told to stay away but simply wouldn’t.

You heard it everywhere first.

“That’s the worst thing about it,” Denver cornerback Tyrone Braxton said. “Any time somebody tells you you can’t do something, you want to prove them wrong.

“If you don’t prove them wrong, then they think they’re the greatest that much more.”

Braxton sighed.

“One of these days. . . “

By now, of course, the Broncos run the risk of running out of these days. They’ve appeared in four of these things--a full one-sixth of all Super Bowls--and lost them by a cumulative margin of 163-50.

Worse than that, they’re getting worse.

Check out the scores:

XII: Cowboys 27, Broncos 10.

XXI: Giants 39, Broncos 20.

XXII: Redskins 42, Broncos 10.

XXIV: 49ers 55, Broncos 10.

Stop them, before they qualify again.

“It’s tough to figure,” Denver linebacker Karl Mecklenburg said. “We have a very good football team and, for some reason, we haven’t played well in Super Bowls. I don’t understand. If anybody does, please have them give us a call.”

It has reached the point where Bronco Coach Dan Reeves, present for the last three disasters, gets asked to rank them.

“On a scale of one to 10, 10 being worst,” Reeves said, “I’ve had three 10s. Anybody who enjoys losing, 55-10, and is coaching in the National Football League, I’d like to meet him.”

Fifty-five to 10. The most lopsided defeat in Super Bowl history. The 49ers had 461 yards. The Broncos had 167. The 49ers had 28 first downs. The Broncos had 12.

Compared to Denver, the Rams played the 49ers tough.

Why do these things happen to the Broncos? Why have they been chosen as the gum on the shoe of NFL history? What did they do to anyone, besides their insidious plot to spray-paint America orange?

“Life can be awful cruel,” Reeves said.

Words do not suffice for what happened to Denver on Sunday, although several Broncos tried.

“We got destroyed,” Braxton said.

“We got demolished,” nose tackle Greg Kragen said.

Kragen called the 49ers “virtually unstoppable” and said “nothing short of a miracle was going to get us out of this one. . . . Nothing was funny about today. It was a long day, it was hot in there, it was humid. I was just trying to survive.”

Believe it or not, for the Broncos, the worst is yet to come.

They have to return home and face the wrath of Broncomania, in the full flower of despair and disappointment.

“Not only did we lose, but we got destroyed,” Braxton said. “The rest of (next) season, we’ve got to hear all that. It’s going to be a long off-season.”

Braxton says he already has taken precautions.

“They probably won’t treat us with no respect, but that makes no difference to me,” he said. “I’m getting out of town. I’m not staying around for that.”

Although the memories, he concedes, will haunt him all the way home to Madison, Wis.

“There’s no way you can block it out,” he said. “This was the ultimate game of the year, the ultimate game of your life. We didn’t make the plays. We did it. Nobody else did.

“It’s like any other phase of life. You just got to take it.”

One way to avoid this in the future is to avoid future Super Bowls. This has been suggested. But the Broncos insist that as long as there are Super Bowls, they will try to keep playing in them.

Must be the free party.

“I do know the only way to win a Super Bowl is to get to one,” Mecklenburg said. “We seem to do that all right.”

But the last step, they do that all wrong. Since when does practice make perfect?

“One of these days, we’re going to do it right,” Reeves said. “We’re going to get to the level it takes to win here.”

Braxton said, “This is just going to make that Super Bowl victory, when we get it, all the sweeter.”

And when, Tyrone, is that scheduled?

“Soon,” he said. “Soon.”