Monday Night Football

Mile High Turncoats Continued

Jeromey Balderrama

Last month I wrote a post reacting to the number of Broncos season ticket holders that sold their tickets to Cowboy fans, calling them “traitors” and “turncoats”.  Well it may have taken a Steelers game to get other people to notice, but it looks like I’m not alone.

Someone wrote a guest post on Mile High Report (an awesome Broncos blog, by the way) about whether Broncos Country is for sale. The next day, the Denver Post’s Mike Klis responds in a Mailbag story about someone who posed those same concerns.

If you didn’t see the Broncos/Steelers game on Monday Night, then you missed out on seeing our stadium inundated with those Tacky Terrible Towels twirling around.  The Cowboys have been called “Americas Team”, but several media pundits have suggested that the Steelers are truly Americas Team, given recent statistical fan surveys.  You go back to the formula of hosting teams that don’t play in your city very often, coupled with a large and passionate fanbase as Pittsburgh, on top of that having it on Monday night when it becomes difficult for some fans to attend: a perfect storm of neutrality formed at Mile High on Monday.

Klis actually went to the Broncos COO to get a comment, and they simply responded with “Frankly there’s nothing we can do about it. Our ability to control that is nonexistent and would be illegal to do so” [Denver Post].

He’s right, but season ticket holders: that doesn’t make the act of selling your tickets to opposing fans any less traitorous.

After our original buyer for our 2nd set of tickets was forced to back out, Bethany and I had to put our money where our mouth was and sell the tickets at a loss to ensure that Steelers fans didn’t get them.  I realize that not everyone may be in a financial position to do that, but if you’re looking at your tickets as a profit-making experience, then maybe you shouldn’t be owning season tickets.

I’m just glad that we don’t have any more Monday Night home games on the schedule. I loathe Monday Night games at home.  It may be exciting for the players, and I love wearing my jersey on Mondays when your team is playing, but it sucks for fans going to the game.  First off, you have to make an effort to leave work early just to get there in time.  While you’re driving, not only are you battling “Game Day Traffic”, but you’re now dealing with “Typical Weekday Rush Hour” traffic.  No matter how early you leave, you don’t get any time to tailgate.  I could be wrong, but it seems like everyone working at the stadium on Monday Nights are not the typical people that work there on Sundays – I’m talking about everyone from the bus drivers to concession stand workers.  The experience just seems cheapened.  Once the game ends you deal with traffic, hoping you can get home before the clock strikes Tuesday and you have to be at work in 6 hours (and I can’t imagine how horrible it is for those on Eastern Time). I don’t mean to come across as ungrateful for the opportunity to watch my team live, but I’ll take a Sunday afternoon game over a Monday Night home game any time of year.

Twittering Monday Night Football

Jeromey Balderrama

Part of the reason I’m suck a slacker at updating my blog is because I Twitter so much.  Looking at my Twitter widget on my blog, you may have noticed that I posted to Twitter while watching Monday Night Football between the Packers and Broncos.  What you may not realize is that I went nuts on Twitter and ended up going on some tirades.  If it couldn’t be any more self-serving, I thought I would elaborate on some of my messages, especially since you can only say so much in 140 characters:

At Mile High for MNF. It smells like hair paint, and there are a ton of Packer fans.

Holy crap it smelled like hair/face paint up there, yet the closest person with paint on them was 4 seats away, it actually started giving me a bit of a headache during the 3rd quarter.

Stupid Broncos fans who sold their tix to Cheeseheads. This is pretty much an away game

The Packers/Broncos fan ratio at the game was absurd.  It seriously had to be 60/40, give or take 5%.  I thought the Pittsburgh Steelers game a week before was bad, but Packer fan managed to prove that it could be worse.  I had some theories as to why there were so many Packer fans: There were likely people like me who had Game 5 World Series tickets and sold away their Broncos tickets.  I was about to do just that, but luckily decided to postpone the sale after each loss.  I also heard that Packer fans travel well and are eager to be able to go to games.  You also take the Packer fans that live out here and are willing to front a lot of money to see their team play at Mile High every 7 years, combine them with the turncoat Broncos fans willing to sell their tickets for 30 Pieces of Silver and you get Cheesehead Nation at Mile High.

DAMMIT!! The trumpet’s back. It’s official: the drumline sucks again.

I think my issues with the Broncos Stampede drumline warrants it’s own post, but I’ll give you the synopsis: Why does the drum-line need a trumpet player that plays the same Shakira song for 4 years straight?  You have hundreds of pounds of drum equipment on the field, and it’s all ruined by the wimpy trumpet player.  I thought the Stampede learned their lesson, as the trumpet player hadn’t come around all season.  Tonight that changed.

Would it kill the drumline to learn a new song? Or at least be good at the only one you know?

There’s only so many times I can listen to “La Tortura”, and even though the drum-line reverts to rock-beat-mode it some how manages to sound like a water jug rolling down a hill.

Nothing says “I’m a huge fan” quite like painting your face… and leaving early

Dude. DON’T LEAVE EARLY! Maybe you can leave when one of the teams is being blown out, or if you have a babysitter you don’t want to keep up late – but there are no other good reasons for leaving when your team is down by 3 and storming the field on a 2-minute drill.  Oh, and “beating traffic” is never a good reason to leave early.  Chances are that you’re going to get caught with all of the other “traffic beaters”, and heavy traffic is the reality of sporting events.

We just went into overtime and these ladies in front of us decide to leave. What a waste of tickets

Once a year the seats in front of us are occupied by two ladies – I assume one is the wife of season ticket holder, and her friend.  They always somehow manage to go to the huge games, and they couldn’t be any less interested in football.  They always show up at the end of 1st quarter, stick around for about 10-15 minutes (actual minutes, not football clock minutes), leave again and don’t return until 4th quarter.  Where do they go?  They go smoke!  Look, I don’t hold anything against people who are addicted to cigs, but if your need for heaters so bad that you’re willing to miss the majority of an event you paid $112 to go to – I think you have a smoking problem.

Worse yet when they’re at their seats they talk during the whole game, don’t cheer except for the most inappropriate times, flirt with some married guy (when they’re married themselves), and couldn’t be any more disinterested in the actual game.  Here the Broncos are storming down the field and manage to kick a last-second field goal to send the game into overtime.  The stadium is ecstatic and everyone rises to their feet.  So do they – to go have a smoke before they head home.  Nice…

 

Sorry for all of the rants, but when the Broncos fail to capitalize in the Red Zone and manage to screw up 2 opportunities on the 1-yard line – it can put a Broncos fan in a bad mood.