Six Better Ways to Spend the Broncos’ Paychecks

When you grow up in Colorado, you can’t escape the Broncos. You can’t walk down the street without being accosted by the logo, and people will actually cancel long-standing plans because their beloved team is playing.

For me watching Broncos games, up to and including the coveted Super Bowl, (Please don’t sue me, NFL!) is a social obligation. It’s something I don’t really care for but must do anyway. Like giving hugs to distant relatives or wearing pants.

To say you don’t care about the Broncos in Colorado is like saying you don’t like mountains or the local microbrewery. It’s a great way to alienate yourself from friends and family.

All of this passion, while difficult for the sports-unenthusiast, is good for the players. According to Business Insider the highest paid member of the team, Peyton Manning, pulls down a whopping $17,500,000 and even the lowly players make more in a few games than I am likely to see in my entire life.
With that kind of paycheck, they are expected to deliver victory. Even I know that the Bronco’s performance in the 2014 Championship Game was dismal at best, and a complete disappointment for their ravenous, sometimes emotionally-unstable fans.

For the team to make it all the way to the end and then buckle under the pressure is like Frodo making it to the fires of Mount Doom, only to decide he wanted to keep the Ring for himself after all. Only the Broncos didn’t have Gollum or Samwise Gamgee around to save them from themselves.

Call me a fool, but it appears the millions of dollars paid to a team that cracks under pressure could have been more wisely spent elsewhere. Somewhere that would not end in such a high disappointment-per-dollar ratio. Below are six ways the Bronco’s paychecks could have been better spent, listed in order from most obvious to ridiculous.

I. Invest in the Bench.

Everyone knows it is a good idea to have a backup plan. Whether you are simply planning your day or a multi-million dollar project it is good to have another option when things start to go south. You can spend all of your money on the fastest, most powerful sports car, but it won’t do you any good when the highway is covered in ice.

Last Sunday the Broncos’ star player and de-facto team captain, Peyton Manning, was the fancy car, and the Seattle Seahawks were the icy road. One was clearly not prepared for the other. It would have been wise for the Broncos to keep the sports car, but still have a solid truck waiting in the garage for when the sports car loses traction and slides off the road.

Richard Sherman’s not a thug. He is a winter storm.

II. Reimburse Fans

But we all make mistakes. The team management, for whatever reason, refused to play the second string when the first was clearly broken. It was sort of like going to a movie theater with two different projectors. One projector is completely digital, can play 3D movies, and is prone to the occasional glitch. The other projector not quite as good, but it always works. When the first projector broke, the theater management refused to switch the movie over, and the audience was treated to a blank screen.

There is a big difference, though. If this were to happen at a theatre, everyone who bought a ticket would be reimbursed or at the very least given a rain check. When football fans were treated to a blank screen of a game there was nothing to console them. Thousands of people bought tickets to the game, paid for travel expenses, and waited for hours in the cold for security, then received no consolation for their misplaced efforts.

Everyone who went to the game in person, both Broncos and Seahawks fans alike, should be reimbursed for their efforts. People wanted to see a game, not a landslide.

III. Charity

Maybe, though, it should have never even gotten that far. There are plenty of other football teams to root for, why do the people in Colorado need one that so often raises their hopes and then dashes them? There are plenty of charities that could have used that money. Giving to organizations that support veterans, or feed the impoverished, or even a charity to buy sports cars for regular people might be a wiser use of the money that goes to the Broncos.

IV. Open a School for young Football Players

Or we could put the football thing on the back burner for a while in order to invest in the future. The current Denver Broncos might have a hit and miss record, but that can be rectified on the future. All of the money from ticket sales and merchandising should have gone to a Colorado Football Academy. Sure, this plan might get some flack from losers who don’t care about football.

But in twenty years the Denver Broncos could be a team who, like the ancient Spartans, were trained from childhood to be victory machines. And all of them would be from Colorado.

V. Give a gold bar to Everyone in Colorado

 Forget investing in the future, we should be investing in the present. Colorado is famous for its mountains, and the tons of precious metals that were pulled from them.

I wonder how disappointed Broncos fans would be if next year the team did not exist, and instead everyone in Colorado received a gold bar in the mail. A gold bar with the Broncos logo embossed on one side and the words, “we’re sorry,” on the other.

VI. Invest in R&D for a Water Machine

 For many years Colorado has been in a drought. Rivers are running dry, the snow-capped peaks are covered more in tourists than snow, and aquifers are becoming little more than giant cavities in the ground.

Drought is a fundamental part of nature. In the thousands of years of human history we have learned one thing about nature: nothing can defeat it. Nothing except, in some cases, piles and piles of money. Piles of money can defeat anything.

With all the money spent on the Denver Bronco’s we could pay to develop a water machine that forces Mother Nature to give up her rain with temperature differences, or salt in the air, or barometric pressure, or something.

We’ve got oxygen, and we’ve got hydrogen, and with enough money I’m sure we could find a way two force those two elements to procreate and bring us the sweet child that is water.

Unfortunately, the people this plan would benefit most are probably the ones that are also against it. The blue-collar ranchers and farmers that are the backbone of Colorado need the water machine more than anyone. But when they are selling their fat calves and lambs or reaping gigantic harvests they will gripe. It just won’t be the same as the golden days when everything was drying up around them, but at least they had their own team to root for.