Everybody wants to be my Bowlen
The owner of the Broncos can presumably no longer speak for himself. Now everyone wants his job.
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It’s cold outside but there’s a hot wind blowing in Denver.
Professional gum-flappers are taking to the airwaves and eviscerating Broncos ownership for being cheap.
Triggering this talk is speculation that the Broncos will not take advantage of an NFL rule that allows teams to pay forward their salary cap deficit from the prior year.
The Broncos have 28M in cap space left over from 2011 (when they were the 2nd most frugal of the league’s 32 teams) that they can add to their cap in 2012. Pending free agent signings they’re 23M under the cap for next year. Add to that figure the space they are allowed to transfer and the Broncos can throw over 50M around in signings for next season.
Whether or not they wish to take advantage of this opportunity is a decision they must make before next Wednesday.
Of course, many in the media have made their minds up for them.
Apparently, it’s not just Pat Bowlen, Joe Ellis, Brian Xanders and John Elway who run the show at Dove Valley. Radio and magazine guys want to do the job, too. Otherwise, they will say that the Broncos are just stealing from the taxpayers.
Worse, they will tear into the Denver Post for not roundly criticising every move the Broncos make or don’t make.
When the 400M dollar Your-Name-Here Stadium was built, Pat Bowlen promised that he would keep the Broncos competitive. What he didn’t say he would do is spend every last dime that he is allowed to spend under league rules every single season until he was broke.
Listening to the radio you would assume that the Broncos don’t even try to be good from year to year. In other words, you would think that they were talking about the Avalanche.
Writers and hosts are whipping Broncos fans into a senseless frenzy over the ways in which the organization elects to manage its budgets.
The Broncos clearly try to be good and they clearly make what they feel to be the best possible decisions. They also run a private business with the objective of it being as profitable as it can be.
Yes, the Denver Broncos are a public trust. The taxpayers built the team a big ass stadium and we deserve to be rewarded with a quality product in return. And we almost always are.
We also reap the enormous benefits associated with the things that happen outside of that stadium in terms of civic pride, jobs, a sense of community and the millions of dollars in sales tax revenues generated on Broncos Sundays.
We don’t get to run the Broncos.
That’s Pat Bowlen’s job. And, if he’s not healthy enough to do it, it’s his to decide who does. We bought a stadium, not a football team.
The Broncos pay rent, you know.
As fans we deserve to have high expectations and we do. And, with the exception of a couple of seasons in the McDaniels era, we are rewarded with a Broncos team that is always in the thick of it. Whether or not they make the playoffs or a run at a Championship, we get our money’s worth. That’s not true in every NFL city.
Ask a Browns fan how bad we have it around here.
Denver is a mid-market City and our teams bring in mid-market dollars. That means that it’s unreasonable to expect the local franchises to spend the way those in New York and Philadelphia do. Besides, tossing lots of money around has never translated to wins in the NFL. Ask an Eagles fan how bad we have it around here.
I sometimes wish Pat Bowlen and his group were running the KSE teams.
If you want to criticise an owner for failing to spend money why not hold Stan Kroenke’s feet to the fire?
I trust the Denver Broncos. Apparently, I am in the minority.
