September 3, 2003
South Stands

Sound the alarms.  A Colorado institution has been dismantled before our eyes without the slightest whimper of protest.  Usually, in our Centennial State, whenever any building two decades or older is threatened by a wrecking ball organized protest runs rampant.  Here in our own Happy Valley even a three-walled handball court, having seen previous duty as a storage bin for parks and recreation fertilizer, was saved from dismantling by well-organized opposition.  Local citizens convinced authorities the Plaza Urritia, erected in the eighties, was an integral part of Grand Valley history.  The handball court still stands at 24 and G roads and, on rare occasions, is even used for its intended purpose.

     Why then was no one there to protest when an institution of intrinsic value for all Coloradoans, indeed we are talking about the very heart and soul of Bronco football, was vaporized from our midst under the guise of creature comforts and modern technology. I’m talking about the South Stands.  As a South Stander with over twenty years in grade I’m here to tell you, contrary to the official Bronco spin, the South Stands, as we knew them and as a positive force in the history of our Bronco’s, is toast.

     The two Bronco exhibition games last week were living testament to the deterioration of the South Stands and Bronco football. Today’s missing fan frenzy (albeit alcohol fueled for the most part) and unkempt squalor of yesteryear have come at a price and I‘m not referring to the increase from $25 to $57 a seat that occurred in the move from Mile High to Invesco. 

     It is true you no longer have to spend four quarters of football with your personal belongings on your lap because storing them under the seat would result in a sopping mess of spilled beer soaked raingear and sweatshirts by the second quarter.  One must also acknowledge a trip to the restroom no longer entails a fifteen-minute minimum wait in line.  Those are just two of the things I really miss.  By avoiding game day beer consumption one could make it through four quarters without leaving your seat.  But the two beers a quarter guy in front of you was usually on bathroom break for all of the third quarter and most of the fourth meaning one had an unobstructed view and a footrest for most of the second half.

    Plus all this comfort at added expense has led to a gentrified fan in the South Stands, one who attends the game for “the experience” rather than for the express purpose of seeing the Orange and Blue kick serious butt.  Oh for the days when an individual wearing Raider garb feared for his or her life when hiking a South Stands walkway.  Today’s spectator in the most southerly section of Invesco Field, just smiles and waves at Oakland partisans rather than screaming in full voice the organized chant of “Raiders suck!”   Life has become so calm around our seats that last week no one was ejected by the Mile High militia until the third quarter of the Colts game.  Why in the old stadium the gendarmes hauled off entire rows before opening kick-off.

     The South Stands have deteriorated to the point even that little weasel the Leprechaun now shows his face at our end of the field.  Oh how the old South Stands disliked that little TV courting twerp.  First off the Orange and Blue leprechaun is a rip-off of the Notre Dame mascot meaning he possesses not one iota of originality and an even larger fault is he cares not whether the Bronco’s win or lose but where the TV cameras are taking crowd shots.  For real South Standers there is only one genuine Bronco mascot, the Barrel Man.  That dude is Bronco to the core.

      Jim Renner sold me his pair of South Stands season tickets back in the early eighties when illness was keeping him home on Bronco’s game day. Jim wanted his seats to be occupied by people who appreciated what the South Stands meant to Bronco football.  Now, I’m sad to say, the uncouth behavior and hooligan mentality of the South Stands seems to have disappeared forever.  We’re all poorer because of that truth.  People around me at Invesco don’t seem nearly as concerned about the inability of the Bronco defense to cover anyone on third and long as they are with talking on their cell phones.

     Don’t tell me that Brian Griese, lame as he was the past two years, was responsible for the decline and fall of the Bronco nation.  No, the precipitous deterioration in Bronco fortunes occurred with the gentrification of the South Stands.