Broncos Are No Laughing Matter

Come onnnnnnnn, Denver.

Let’s go Super Bowling, one more time, kids. Bring the whole Mile High gang up. Bring John Elway and his mile-wide smile. Bring Bobby Humphrey home to Hubert Humphrey’s dome. Bring fresh prince of mid-air Vance--excuse me; the Vance--Johnson and his easel and oils. Bring Herr Mecklenburg, too. Bring everybody from Boulder and Bedrock and all those rocky Colorado towns for one more hike toward the mountaintop.

Others might dread the prospect of another Super Bowl involving (ugh) Denver. Maybe they will be pulling for Buffalo in Sunday’s AFC championship game for that very reason, simply to keep Super Party XXVI from being crashed by those crashing bores from the Rockies who have been there four times before without coming closer than 17 points to the winner.

Don’t worry, Denver.

Don’t have a cow, you Broncos.

Some of us are still behind you.

Some of us still think of you as winners.

Not all of us are concerned about your orange always getting crushed.

Honestly, I was all set to write one of those “Oh, no, not them again” stories. I really was. You can get a lot of frequent-writer mileage out of busting them Broncos, let me tell you. Make a lot of wisecracks about Denver having an outstanding chance to win the Super Bowl, at least until the second quarter. Do a lot of material on a Bronco having more second-place finishes than any horse since Alydar. About the Broncos getting their heads handed to them so often, you would think they were coached by Don Corleone.

I was primed to let them have it, believe me.

Hey, I’ve seen Denver take a header in Pasadena, in San Diego, and in New Orleans twice. I’ve seen better football played by cartoon beer bottles.

You’ve seen them, too. You’ve seen the Broncos surrender 39 points in Super Bowl XXI, surrender 42 points in Super Bowl XXII, surrender 55 points in Super Bowl XXIV. Who’s Denver’s defensive coordinator--Paul Westhead? How many points can we expect the Washington Redskins or Detroit Lions to score in Super Bowl XXVI if the opposition (if you can call it that) is provided by the Denver Broncos?

If you scored a Super Bowl in Roman numerals when Denver plays, you would run out of Xs and have to use Ls.

Frankly, I don’t understand it. How can a team reach four NFL championship games without shedding its reputation as a loser? Yet when you think of the Denver Broncos in a big game, you think of mice in a maze that can never find the cheese. You begin to think the only way a Bronco is ever going to bring home a trophy is if they present one to the game’s LVP.

The Super Bowl itself is more than a quarter-century old, but look at the teams that have never even been to one--San Diego, Houston, Seattle, Cleveland, Baltimore/Indianapolis, St. Louis/Phoenix, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, New Orleans, even Detroit. Look at those ancient mastodons like the Rams or the Chicago Bears or the Philadelphia Eagles. One crummy Super Bowl each.

Did you ever stop to realize that the 25 Super Bowls have been won by a dozen teams? There are a lot of “losers” out there, still trying to do something right for a change, most of them far more desperate than Denver.

Yet like many of you, I suspect the Buffalo Bills have a better chance of staging an entertaining Super Bowl for us than our old buds the Broncs.

After all, it was Buffalo that last January gave the world the Best Super Bowl Ever, as some people who narrate football film highlights call it, speaking as they do in capital letters. Buffalo’s game with the New York Giants was an instant classic, right down to the unhappy ending for kicker Scott Norwood, who probably has nightmares featuring Satan with a pitchfork in a referee’s shirt, shrieking: “Wide to the right! Wide to the right!”

And Buffalo probably will win its conference title Sunday, making this whole Please, No More Denver business academic.

But that doesn’t mean we should design a sign with a Bronco’s face and a red slash through it.

John Elway is a winner, forever dangerous. Maybe you remember his capital-D Drives against Cleveland or Houston. Me, I still picture a 56-yard hand grenade Elway hurled to Ricky Nattiel in the Super Bowl game at San Diego, a game that Denver led after one quarter, in case anybody has forgotten, 10-0.

Bobby Humphrey? Well, Bobby Humphrey fell off the wall; Bobby Humphrey had a great fall. Elway now hands off instead to Gaston Green, who was a wonderful player for UCLA and then played pro ball for a couple of seasons for . . . somebody, uh, I forget whom.

Vance Johnson? He’s my man, if not my main one. Has been ever since Buddy Martin’s best-selling (in Colorado) book “The Color Orange” gave me credit not only for “discovering” Vance Johnson (really) and making him the megastar he is today (in Colorado), but for immortalizing him as “the Vance,” the way Donald Trump later became famous (in New York) as “the Donald.”

I wouldn’t mind listening to (and listening to) the Vance at another Super Bowl. He can tell us some more about his paintings, which are so identical to Patrick Nagel’s that they are, at best, masterpieces and, at worst, forgeries.

Karl Mecklenburg, Clarence Kay, Dandy Dan Reeves . . . be good to have all the old Bronco gang back at the Super Bowl corral. Doesn’t mean they’re going to lose it.

Doesn’t mean we have to watch it, either.