Does your coach do this?

Sometimes when you’re at the stadium you miss some great gems like this. 

We were in the South Stands, too focused on leaving and didn’t notice McDaniels going North this fired up.  Man is that cool.

I know some people may see this and say “Act like you’ve been there before coach”, but I for one am glad to see a coach react the same way that players and fans do after a big win like this.  Earned or not, McDaniels has endured a lot of crap from fans and the media since he arrived in Denver.  He’s done what was unthinkable back in July and defnitely deserved this moment.  Congrats coach, and best of luck being the tar out of the Chargers.

Today’s Miles High Experience

Today was a long day, a fun day, but a long one.  We played a great show at Signature’s Night Club last night which I’ll have to get into a bit more, but a long drive home didn’t get me back into Fort Collins until after 2am.  I woke up this morning at 8:30 and started to make my way back to the Mile High City to see the Broncos take on the Patriots. Unfortunately I gave Bethany the illness that I had last week, so she wasn’t able to go.  Luckily my buddy Matt was able to drop things and head down to the game with me.

It was definitely a cold one.  I dressed in a decent amount of layers: a turtleneck, sweatshirt jacket, and of course my jersey.  The sun finally broke out in the 2nd half and made it warm enough to take off the knit hat and gloves.

If you saw the game (and thus the uniforms), you could see that the Broncos were going back to the 60’s, and the stadium crew was trying to go for the same thing as well.  Some of the things they did were pretty clever: the Cheerleaders with the 60’s outfits and huge pom-poms, a pep band playing (what I presume is) the Broncos fight song when touchdowns were scored, 60’s music during timeouts. 

However there were a few things that completely missed the mark: The big screens (people call them jumbo-trons, Mile High calls it “Thundervision”) showed everything in black & white, and to drive home the point they put it in this obnoxious old TV border.   The idea was cute, but there were a few problems: 1) Both jerseys came across as being white on the screen, making it difficult to identify players; 2) Even though they were going with a black & white effect to make things look old, it was still in HD. 3) The typical graphics/ads/screens were pretty much unreadable.  It was just one of those things that probably took things too far.

We were treated to half-time show by the CSU Marching Band – more appropriately: the home stands were treated to the show, as that was the only section that could actually hear the band.  I didn’t realize just how bad the acoustics in the stadium were until after I heard the band.  It seemed that all of the sound got absorbed by those plastic seats, with nothing left to bounce around the stadium.

Old-school experiences aside, it was great to walk out of the stadium with a win – especially one that practically no one outside of Denver was expecting.

Into the Weekend Thoughts

Well the week is nearly over, and while I have a bunch of random thoughts floating through my head, I’d figure I’d do a culmination of random thoughts in one big post.  So without further ado, here are my thoughts going into the weekend.

First a Friday thought.  I woke up this morning to find on Twitter that Barak Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize for doing.  Maybe he got it for closing Guantanamo – oh wait, it’s still open.  Well how about withdrawing from Iraq – oh wait, we haven’t done that either and are escalating things in Afghanistan (and don’t get me wrong, I think it’s important to fight on both of these fronts).  Maybe it’s for getting the Olympi-oh wait.  Ok, politics aside – can we all agree that the Nobel Peace Prize is simply the Norwegian way of promoting their politics?  Obama joins the hallowed names of Jimmy Carter (for whining about Iraq) and Yasser Arafat (for going to a meeting).

My brother-in-law pointed me to a Time.com article about this that is pretty spot on, especially in the end:

"Compare this to Greg Mortenson, nominated for the prize by some members of Congress, who the bookies gave 20-to-1 odds of winning. Son of a missionary, a former army Medic and mountaineer, he has made it his mission to build schools for girls in places where opium dealers and tribal warlords kill people for trying. His Central Asia Institute has built more than 130 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan – a mission which has, along the way, inspired millions of people to view the protection and education of girls as a key to peace and prosperity and progress." [Time.com]

Again, so does this award have any less credibility to it? Hell, the Grammys are now more relevant.

Shifting to football: Historically people think throwback jerseys are cool, and I love the Broncos Orange uniforms (either from the late 60’s, or the ones from the 70’s to mid-90’s).  This weekend the Broncos are going to prove that Throwbacks can be ugly.  To celebrate their 50th anniversary, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the AFL, the Broncos are going to wear their "mustard & brown" striped-socks uniforms.  Frank Schwab from the Colorado Springs Gazette captured the first look on his blog.  If you notice Jabar Gaffney (#10), he twisted his striped socks to look like a barbershop pole.

BroncosUnis

To make matters worse, I think the refs are again going to be wearing their cream-sicle colored uniforms again.  I think I’m going to avoid eating anything before the game, because all of these colors are going to make me sick.

Staying on the Broncos, I have to say I’m really nervous about the amount of press coverage Denver has gotten.  I wasn’t complaining when Denver wasn’t getting any respect for their first three games, I was completely fine with them flying under the radar. I think under-rated teams thrive when they have the "nobody believes in us" attitude in the locker room.  Now a week has passed, and the next thing you know everyone is talking about the Broncos and Daniel Graham is on the cover of Sports Illustrated. This is a little too much attention for my comfort level.  The only thing we have going for us is the national media’s infatuation with Tom Brady and the Patriots, and still don’t give Denver a chance.  Let’s hope the Broncos prove them wrong again.  My guess is that we’ll win 2 of the next 4 games to be at a very healthy 6-2.

My Rockies Prediction this weekend is that at least one of the games will get postponed or canceled.  It’s going to be a cold one this weekend, and far be it that baseball players face any kind of adversity when it comes to weather.

Lastly, I’m very pumped for Greenfoot’s first show for the fall.  We ended up taking time off in the summer due to my wedding and Julien working in California for a few months.  We’re really pumped to be playing a full night of music on Saturday night.  We’ll be over at Signature’s Night Club, which is a place that is gaining some really positive reputation around Denver for being a great place for bands.  If you’re in Denver and looking for something to do on Saturday night, come check us out!

Turncoat Broncos fans killing our home field advantage

MileHigh

Today was a wonderful win for the Denver Broncos, but too bad it was shared virtually half a stadium full of Cowboys fans.  When we got to our seats, we were dismayed to find that half of the section was filled with Dallas faithful.  Looking out over the stadium it became apparent that each section had a sizable amount of Cowboys fans – so much so that it felt like our home crowd advantage was all but eliminated.

Memories quickly returned to the AFC Championship of 2005, when Steelers fan invaded Mile High Stadium.  Armed with their Terrible Towers they turned Denver into a neutral site.  The game ended with those towels flailing around, looking like wasps buzzing all over the stadium. While I went home disappointed about the Broncos performance, I was cursing those season ticket holders that sold the stadium’s soul so they could make a profit off their Playoff Tickets.

The same happened in Denver again today.  A perfect storm was created when you have a team with a large fanbase (the Cowboys), come to town once every seven years, which leaves hungry visiting fans willing to pay virtually any price to see their team.  I don’t blame Cowboy fans for buying tickets, they have a right to go to see their team play.  I do however have a problem with the ticket holders so willing to give them up.

During the drive home someone called into 850’s post game show with “Lou from Littleton” making the same observation. Lou brushed it off, simply saying the Broncos fans need to be louder, and that you shouldn’t blame people for needing to make money during these economic times.  To those as coy as Lou I say this: Yes, Broncos fans could be louder, but it doesn’t help when Broncos fans that are perfectly able to come to the game send visitors in their place.  As far as hard economic times are concerned: if season ticket holders can’t afford their tickets then maybe it’s time to let someone else on the 15-year waiting list step up and take on these season tickets for a change.

I’m not saying that you should leave your <Insert Visiting Team Name> friend out in the cold.  If they want to go to the game, invite them to go with you.  It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but bringing an opposing fan is a lot different than blindly selling them your tickets.  At that point they’ll likely bring a fellow <Visiting Team Name> fan, cutting the home crowd influence in your seats to 0% rather than 50%.

This may come across as pretty harsh, but if you’re a season ticket holder for your team and won’t be going to the game, the least you can do is try to ensure that fans of your team will take your tickets.  Is that really too much to ask?  I realize there are a few exceptions, but not enough to fill half of the stadium with fans from another team. In the meantime, enjoy your thirty pieces of silver.

Cutler Bowl (help wanted)

CutlerBowl

Tomorrow Denver’s biggest villain since. at least Ashlie Lelie, Eddie Kennison, Brandon Marshall (but who knows?) is coming back to Denver for his home-coming.  Who would have thought anyone would be excited to see a pre-season game, but I can only imagine the amount of vitriol that is going to come from the Orange & Blue fans in the stands when Cutler takes the field.

I’m sorry to say that I actually have a Broncos Cutler jersey in my closet.  Even though I had the Cutler #6, I still couldn’t resist wearing my John Lynch jersey last season.  Now I have a perfectly bad Cutler jersey and I’m trying to come up with a ceremonious way to get rid of the jersey.  We’ll be tailgating at the stadium, so tomorrow would be the perfect opportunity to destroy it.  The obvious answer is to burn it, but I think the stadium security and police would frown upon that. One idea I have is to use it as a doormat, but that seems to obvious.

Basically I’m looking for the perfect idea on how I could destroy my Cutler jersey.  Any suggestions?