Over the last few years, little by little, I’ve become a sports nut. When I first moved to Boulder, I didn’t follow any of the local teams and in fact actively disliked the Broncos because I never liked John Elway. (There’s not denying he was a great player, but I never liked the way he refused to go to Baltimore when he was first drafted.) And as it happened, the very first week I was here, the Broncos played the Atlanta Falcons in the 1999 Super Bowl. Though I was never an avid Falcons fan, I grew up near Atlanta and hopped on the bandwagon when they made it the Super Bowl.
They lost.
Since then, Elway retired, the Falcons and the Broncos both hit a rough patch and I slowly started following the Broncos. I also became a huge Colorado Avalanche fan (even if no one else cares about hockey) and at least pay attention to the Nuggets. I also started playing indoor soccer twice week and developed new respect for how hard it is to be a successful professional athlete. Now I listen to every Broncos game on the radio (we don’t have a TV), frequently check stats on ESPN.com and listen religiously to the Fan, especially Sandy Clough and Irv & Joe.
I was lucky enough to live in Chicago during the Michael Jordan era and I followed the Bulls religiously. I was also a Bears fan during that time, and come to think of it the Broncos are a lot like the post-85 Bears. Usually a pretty good team with flashes of brilliance, but every year there seems to be a piece missing, and since Elway they don’t have a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer, kind of like when Walter Payton retired from the Bears.