Admit it, Denver sports fans. You’ve had a pretty good run the past decade. Perhaps you’ve even become a tad spoiled.
You drive up Interstate 25, past Invesco Field at Mile High, the Pepsi Center and Coors Field, maybe on your way to the Broomfield Event Center, and you think. You think about the two Super Bowl victories and the pair of Stanley Cups. You think about Melo and A.I. and Todd and Rod and Super Joe. You think about how attending an All-Star Game around here was like waiting on a bus. They all came along sooner or later.
And, even if you haven’t admitted it to your friends, the past couple of years you grabbed your foam No. 1 digit and gave a little cheer for the Mammoth and the Crush championships, too.
All of which is why things are a little confusing for you in this winter of discontent. The Broncos collapsed in their final game to miss the playoffs, the Avalanche is firmly on its way to missing the postseason for the first time since moving here from Canada, and the Nuggets are stumbling around and in danger of missing the playoffs. Or, you’re thinking, even if they do make it, they’ll be first-round fodder for San Antonio or Phoenix.
Between the standings and the seemingly daily loss of events such as The International, Denver Grand Prix and the Dew Action Sports Tour, there’s precious little to warm the cockles of the local sports populace right now.
“It is kind of depressing,” George McCarrolle, an IT consultant from Highlands Ranch, said at a recent Nuggets game. “Auto racing is really my first love, so that was really sad for me. I don’t know if it’s sponsorships or the economy. It just seems like we’re losing a lot of things that we should have, things that should be in a major city.”
Take me out to the ballgame
Fans shouldn’t despair, according to Steve Sander, a local sports marketer. Even with the local teams struggling, and the city having lost three premier events, Denver is still much better off than many other cities.
“You have to be philosophical and recognize that sports and the whole sports entertainment industry isn’t going to be a straight line of ecstasy. The business of sports is exceedingly cluttered, exceedingly complicated,” Sander said. “You can look at this time right now, but you also have to recognize how lucky we have been.”
Ironically, when asked if there was a team he thought fans could hang their hats on to provide a beacon of light in the present darkness, Sander chose a franchise that hasn’t been to the postseason in more than a decade. It’s one, according to Las Vegas experts, that is slated to once again finish last in its division.
That’s right. The Rockies.
“It’s a tough market in terms of opportunities. The Broncos are such a powerful entity and capture so much of the attention,” Sander said. “But I think the franchise with the greatest upside is the Rockies. They were part of the fabric of the community; the team was, the players were and they were revered.
“And the game is so approachable. It’s a family game. And while it may not match the energy level that goes with today’s lifestyle, baseball captures the weather and the setting of Colorado very well. But right now, they’ve lost the power of the relationship they had with their fans. They’ve stopped caring about the Rockies as much as they once did.”
Only one way to go – up
Asked about having his team mentioned as the one with the most upside, Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd said, “Well, there’s two ways to look at that. We have upside because there’s been so much downside. We like our team. We like our kids. It’s been a very long, arduous process but we’ve been very consistent with it, and we feel very good that very soon we’ll start to see the fruits from that. And once it starts it has the opportunity to last for a very long while, because we have so much depth in our farm system, too.”
As for capturing a marketplace where fans are looking for a winner, O’Dowd said, “In this job, there’s just so much focus on what we’re doing and what we want to accomplish on the field and the vision of what we want to become, I can’t even think about those other things. I know that this market has already demonstrated that it’s a sleeping giant. We only have to give them a product and a group of players they can fall in love with.”
For fans of a certain age, caring about any team has become a much more complicated proposition than it used to be. Free agency and salary caps have dramatically changed the way franchises do business. Those factors in turn lead to some confusing scenarios.
Take the Nuggets. Fan favorite Earl Boykins was a Nugget on Jan. 8, scoring 26 points in a win over Milwaukee. A month later, Boykins was in a Bucks uniform, scoring 26 against Denver.
“It’s hard to get enthusiastic sometimes,” said Jack Barwind, a sports fan and retired college professor from Castle Rock. “I used to love watching players develop, and mature and become very good. Now that doesn’t happen. I’m worried to death the Rockies are going to get rid of Garrett Atkins and Matt Holliday.
“Economics have changed things so much, it’s hard to be loyal because there’s no loyalty from players or teams. Every year it’s a new team. The guy I hated a year ago is playing for you this season, and so now I’m supposed to love him?”
Giving it your all
Even in these business- and financial-oriented times, Sander argues that sports are still capable of providing some of the Jack Armstrong-ish qualities of long ago: teaching youngsters about fair play and providing heroes to look up to. It’s just that the commerce portion – the marketing and corporate sponsorships and the like – can’t be ignored. The International golf tournament and the Grand Prix were lost because of the lack of a title sponsor.
And in many ways, the teams’ need to cater to executives and businesses seems to have trickled down to the everyday fan who goes to the park or the arena. For them, how that contest fits into big-picture issues such as standings and playoff chases isn’t as important as their “game-day experience.”
If I’m going to fork out a hundred bucks to bring my family to a game, and it was fun, and a good game, then it was worth it.
Even though the Nuggets might have next to no chance to catch Utah for the Northwest Division title because they keep blowing fourth-quarter leads, the fact that those games are exciting is good enough for some.
“Even if they’re not winning, it’s still fun to come down,” McCarrolle said. “I used to have season tickets a long time ago, but as the interest in the team went down I let them go. But now they’re so much more exciting. They could win if they put everything together. They remind me of the old Chicago Bulls teams that would beat Cleveland in the playoffs and then lose to Detroit.
“They had to get over that mental hurdle. The Nuggets are good, they just have to learn how to and believe they can win. It’s more mental than a matter of talent.”
The same could apply to those of you whose psyches are indeed just a bit bruised these days. Keep believing that better days are just around the corner. The Mammoth is in first place, after all, and the Crush kicks off the 2007 season in one week.
And, opening day arrives April 2.
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-954-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
