I’ve told this story before, I apologize to anyone who’s read it before. I was about 14, growing up in Toronto and was flipping through the channels on a Sunday afternoon. I had decided earlier that year that the Giants were going to be my football team. But fate intervened. I came across a football game and one of the teams were wearing these bright orange jerseys. I can remember the colour and pbp guy going on about this young QB, Elway, who could throw the ball on a line 50 yards from one sideline to the other. I was hooked and instantly forgot about the Giants. Have been a fan ever since. Got my first jersey at 18, suffered through 3 SB losses before breaking through in that magical 97 season (damn those Jaguars!!). I’ve often wondered why I stayed a fan after Elway left, but I think they (The Broncos) are in my blood now and I can’t even think about cheering for another team. I’ve spent too much emotion on this team to ever abandon them.

I am so glad I found this site, I shudder to think what I’d be going through if all I had to rely on was the MSM negativity. I feel for all of those poor people who don’t know about this site and have to deal with Kizla and Armstrong and the rest of the extremely negative comments in the DP.

I think it was the 1976 Superbowl against Dallas. I was 6 years young. I really don’t know what happened or why I became a fan, but I think that was the day. Maybe it was an underdog thing. I was a Craig Morton fan, then became a big Dan Reeves fan. Then Elway showed up and was an absolute freak of nature. I was hooked. I’m with solace on this. I’ve spent so much emotion on this team over the years, I am a lifer. No other team in any other sport will ever get my loyalty like the Broncos. I love me some Hokies football and will always pull for them, but it really doesn’t compare to my love for the Broncos.

and my family moved to Colorado in ‘79. I didn’t have a favorite team before that, but chose to root for players that I idolized like Roger Staubach, Lynn Swann, and Dick Butkus. If they were good characters or played hard and tough, then I liked them. Anyway, I never really got into any of the California teams, but I do remember the 77 Super Bowl, and watching Craig Morton and Co. I had remembered Craig from his Cowboy days, and knew he was a character as well. I thought the Bright Orange Uniforms were loud enough to speak volumes for a fan. I started following the team the season that we moved, and I haven’t looked back since. When John came to Denver, I was elated because I had followed him since he shredded my High School team to bits. I kept an eye on him through College and knew we were getting a winner. It has been my privilege to watch Elway’s entire career and of course think he is the best QB ever(unbiasedly).

so I just remember watching the Vikings with Culpepper to Moss a lot, that was really my first football memory. Eventually, since most of my family is from Wisconsin, I became a Packer fan. But I really lost interest in them and started looking for other teams to like. When I actually started to get into football a lot, I was a Falcons fan, I liked Vick (ouch), Dunn, Crumpler, and Deangelo Hall a lot, so that lasted for about a year or 2. Then, I started to see Denver. I always loved Champ Bailey, started looking at his teammates, and I liked what I saw. I loved John Lynch when he played for us, I loved DJ Williams, and fell in love with Jay Cutler. I think another thing was that I liked Elway as well as TD a lot (even though I never got to see them play live), and one of my favorite receivers (though I didn’t get to see him play much) was Rod Smith. I know I haven’t been a fan very long, but I also know that this is the team that I love and the team I will watch for many years to come. I wish I could’ve seen some of the glory days I hear everyone here talk about, but I am excited for the new Denver Broncos.

In my family, if the Denver Broncos aren’t written into our DNA, it might as well be. I never really had a choice. It never occured to me that there was a choice. I also enjoyed the double whammy of being just old enough to care when the magical ‘77 season played out. My parents ’big’ wedding gift was Broncos season tickets, back in ’66, before the demand was high. In the fall, everybody through my entire family, extended and all, just buzzed Broncos. It was just a huge part of our life. At that time, the passion was far more complicated than W/L records. It had to be.

 I’ll never forgot my otherwise reasonable mother, standing up in front of the TV after Denver defeated the Steelers in the playoffs…after Mean Joe Green sucker punched an already hurt Paul Howard, and she screamed, with absolute delight: “What the F*** do you think about that, Chuck Noll!!! What do you think of that!!!” That was not a word that commonly came out of her mouth. But who could blame her? I don’t think those that didn’t suffer through all the Bronco heartache pre 1977 understands how huge that was to people. It was their real life Rocky moment. It was the ‘Miracle on Ice’ three years before the fact. And at that time, the Broncos weren’t just disprespected, they were laughed at. And at that time, Denver wasn’t exactly a cosmopolitan or fashionable hub, but rather viewed as an isolated outpost at best…or a dusty little cowtown at worst. So the Broncos were sort of the beacon of regional pride.

As a kid I listened with my Dad on WWL radio to the Saints from year one, back in the Jimmy Taylor, Doug Atkins, Danny Abramowitz, Billy Kilmer days way before the Aints and Who Dat. The home games were never sold out in the old Tulane stadium but on TV one Sunday, long ago, Bronco’s DE Lyle Alzado (pre-Raider days, obviously) was being interviewed, sitting on his sofa in his home in Colorado, in front of a roaring, two story rock-faced fireplace petting this giant white wolf-dog. Being from the flattest and deepest of the Deep South and never having seen a wolf-dog or a two story fireplace or a rock for that matter, this image convinced me that Denver had to be absolutely the coolest place on earth and the Broncos had the most AWESOME players. I got to move to Denver in 1986 and have been able to see every game they played on TV! Thank you. thank you sell-out crowds and season ticket holders!!

But, I’ve been a fan in general since I was in the second grade. JFK was assasinated that year. Really became a die hard fan in Mid 70’s just before Morton came and helped us to the superbowl.

Thanks for telling your stories. Keep them coming!

was the first year i can remember watching the broncos, i was really young and my favorite color was (and still is) orange. it was destiny
then the next 2 years bring super bowls and it was solidified – still waiting for the 3rd and 4th

I always watched the Broncos. They seemed to play a different style of football than most other teams, and that attracted me to them. Dan Reeves was a great coach, and got the Broncos to the Super Bowl more than once, but he “couldn’t or wouldn’t” win it. The same label he placed on Elway. Elway got his revenge when he beat him in his last game. Great memories.

This is when I first remember being fully in love with the Broncos. I was seven and so excited to see my team play on the big stage. I remember going to the store with my dad and picking up chips, salsa, pop, and tons of candy for the big game (something that just never happened in my household). We sat on the couch having a great time despite getting killed in that Super Bowl. I obtained a game program from that game and it has been history ever since. The two Super Bowls we won are just the icing on the cake that have solidified my Broncos love for ever and ever (which I am currently passing on to my daughter [she is two years old and loves watching games with me on Sunday afternoons]).

My earlist experience of Football as a kid was going to Park City on occasion to watch the High School’s ‘eight-man’ football game. My Grandfather was not a big ‘football’ fan—his love was baseball—and that was my real love as a child. My Father was a Navy officer and Annapolis Grad killed shortly before I was born so I idolized my Grandfather. From my Grandfather I developed an everlasting love for the Rocky Mountains. He was an avid lover of fishing, especially Fly-Fishing, and knew every river and stream and ‘Great Spot’ to fish from northern Yellowstone to central Utah—as well as what time of the year to be there. I know many of you youngsters won’t believe this—things were different back then. By the time I was 3 or 4 years old I knew how to toss a salmon-egg into a ripple, let the current carry it to the desired spot, then scream like hell for Grandpa’s help if I hooked something big (back then even small streams could have some very large ‘native’ fish).

1962 was a very big year (actually it started 1960). In 1960 we got a television—not sure really why—I guess everyone was back then. Salt Lake apparentley already had two or three stations but we lived almost as close to Wyoming as Salt Lake—most things looked like what we now call static—and it wasn’t until 1962 when things changed.

As I said before, 1962 was a very big year. I turned 7 that year and my Grandpa gave me a Fly-Pole for my birthday. As the tears force their way into my eyes—you guys have no idea what a great compliment from my Grandpa getting a Fly-Pole was—he was telling me (without saying anything) that I was grown-up enough to learn how to ‘Fly-Fish’.

Anyway—I need to get back to Football—or I might drift into a part of La La Land of memories that is very hard to leave.

Somewhere between 4 and 7 years old kids started putting their ‘Mitts’ away—in the autumn—and begin tossing this ‘football thing’. I’ll tell you, I really loved catching a football, and back then had really good hands (for a kid that is). I had no idea that Football was a ‘really big deal’ outside of this somewhat backwards life. I do know that from somewhere this antenna we put up was bringing in NBC quite clear. One Sunday I watched an AFL game, it involved this, “Denver Bronco” team and I was shocked. I had no idea that there was a Pro-Football Team in the Rockies. I love the Rocky Mountains—never been east of Denver—and never ventured far away. I loved then the Denver Broncos and all the memories that followed…almost as much as that ‘Fly-Pole’ my Grandpa gave me on my seventh birthday..but not nearly as much.

Thanks for sharing

My parents and I lived in the Denver area when I was a kid, and they had season tickets. I think watching “The Fumble” from the third deck was my most vivid memory from my youth.

After we moved away, Denver never ceased to be Home, and the Broncos have always been my strongest tie to my youth. I’m going into my third season as a season ticket holder (my parents had to give them up during the Wade Phillips era). Hopefully one day I’ll get a job back in Colorado and I’ll be able to use them.