It was nearly four hours before kickoff but the air was filled with excitement outside Sports Authority Field.
For 12-year-old Ysias Lucero, it was hard to contain his emotions as his hero walked toward the stadium.
It was Peyton Manning, and he reached for the football Ysias was holding. Manning signed the ball.
“I was shaking,” Ysais said as he showed the ball to his father. “I said, ‘Thank you.’ “
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The Ysias family, all Broncos fans, traveled Sunday from Alberquerque, N.M., for the big game. Win or lose, though, Ysias had a treasure to take home.
Fans arrived early for the showdown against Green Bay, and the area around the stadium was brimming with the hoopla one would expect when two undefeated teams with legendary quarterbacks meet near the mid-point of the season.
The NBC Sunday Night Football bus boasted a long line of fans waiting for a chance to get a peek inside. Galeth Bolanos of Denver was hired by a marketing company to work with the bus’s crew for the weekend. Bolanos was thrilled to have the gig. But he had to temper his Broncos loyalty since Sunday Night Football is non-partisan.
“With Packers fans, I’m being neutral,” he said. “In my heart, I’m a Broncos fan.”
Bronco orange and blue was everywhere in the parking lot but Green Bay fans were making themselves known, too.
Chrystal Rhea, a Wisconsin native who lives in Denver, organized a Green Bay tailgate outside the stadium and word spread among the Packer faithful in Denver who were fired up for a rare chance to see their team in their new hometown.
“This is like a Super Bowl for us,” Rhea said. “This only happens every eight years. We’re going all out.”
Rhea was decked head-to-toe in yellow and green. She wore a silver belt like those worn by WWE champions except she had glued a Packers logo on it, and attached Aaron Rogers name to it.
She also was wearing a “cheese bra,” a play on the famous Green Bay cheese wedge fans wear on their heads.
“This is the highlight of my year,” she said.
Rich Lucero, a Broncos fan from Aurora, had another use for cheese – cooking it.
He was making cheese quesadillas at his tailgate party on the west side of the stadium. And he wasn’t shy about offering cheese to Packer fans, “since we’re going to melt their cheese tonight.”
Lucero had arrived before dawn so he could be first in line for tailgating. His family has held season tickets for 35 years, and his father insists they party in the same spot before every game. Sunday’s game was among the biggest in the history of the franchise.
“It’s Super Bowl-Ish,” Lucero said. “We’re playing for 7 and 0. We want to smash these guys!”
