I don't think I need to tell anyone that, culturally speaking,
football is a pretty big deal here in the US. As I'm typing this I'm trying to
think of a single place in the States where football isn't a dominant social
driver and I'm coming up with...Hawaii? Maybe? Anyway, it certainly is here in
Denver.
Except, like, five times as much.
"You know how you know that God's a
Denver Broncos fan?" asked roughly 10 Denverites by now.
"No" I respond, pretending I
haven't heard this one before.
"Because the sunsets are blue and
orange."
...
The Broncos are routinely a pretty
successful team, which irks me as a fan of the Chiefs (read: not so routinely
successful team), so I suppose you could credit the devotion to that. But most
people who follow football a little more than casually know that it’s a little
deeper than that. True, success breeds loyalty, but even unsuccessful teams
have this “loyalty beyond reason”, a concept a marketing expert could explain
far better than I could.
Still, the reasons hardly matter. This city bleeds blue and orange
(a combination which ironically gives you the actual color people bleed) and it
shows. Every Sunday people from every class, race, and part of the city don
their Bronco jerseys. They all know the offseason moves Denver made, all the
records Peyton has broken and is on pace to break, and most importantly all the
reasons they’ll go all the way this year.
It’s actually kind of a remarkable thing to watch.
Mondays-Saturdays, people pass by each other on the street and on the buses
like you would expect in any city, interacting only when necessary. They have
places to be. But on Sundays, everyone’s a part of some family. Wearing that
orange permits you into some special club where you’re trusted, where you’re
cool, where all that other stuff that used to divide you doesn’t matter
anymore.
It’s a good thing. It might be hard on the surface to see the
societal good in a game featuring overpaid jocks slowly murdering each other,
but it’s undoubtedly there. The sport may be going through an image problem,
namely running backs that are having trouble containing the beatings to the
field, but this class-defying togetherness it almost naturally generates is
without question a positive byproduct of the sport.
And who else would sit at the helm of this strange social unifier
than probably the best quarterback in the NFL, nay, the entire world; Peyton
Manning. I think it’s fair to say that this social club didn’t need such a
legendary leader to continue, but it doesn’t hurt that over half of all those
jerseys have his name and number on the back. This city’s devotion to Manning
is borderline religious, and he rarely disappoints them (except, you know, in
the Super Bowl).
Having such an undisputed poster boy only serves to strengthen the
society of Broncos fans. Here is a symbol around which this brotherhood can
thrive. A man through which their optimism is consistently justified, a name
that by itself gives them rightful cause to believe they’re going all the way
this time; after all they do have a defense this year.
And so, as much as it kills
me as a Chiefs fun to put this in writing, Peyton Manning is indeed a
Patron Saint (I’m not Catholic but it’s a decent alliteration so just go with
it). Anyone that can fuel such a social miracle deserves to be canonized, as it
is in this interaction that we create God’s Kingdom on Earth.
So sure, Denver. I’ll concede that God is a Broncos fan. But I’ll just
point out here that the sky is blue all the time everywhere, so the big guy
must be a big Kansas City Royals fan too.
