In last month’s award-winning Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle column, I wrote about the con job being perpetrated upon you to bring in the Winter Olympics. A quick update. The Winter Games in South Korea will cost $13 billion dollars, double what they thought it was going to cost. NBC paid $963 million for the television rights and, like the NFL, viewership is down. That’s all just chump change to the hornswogglers, footpadders and copperheads that run the media and pull the strings of the power elite in Denver, Colorado.
After that column hit, another great con job got presented. … Pat Bowlen Field.
I always return to my roots. As a boy I was a fan of professional wrestling. My Grandma was a fan of professional wrestling. I later found out when I got an opportunity to work in professional wrestling that I really was a fan. The wrestlers called us “marks.” A carney term. You can go to the carnival, according to legend, they would put a guy behind you who put a mark on your shoulder in chalk that allowed other carnies to know you were a mark, aka a sucker.
Now those same people who ran the Olympics are running Amazon and, actually made an attempt to have heroin shooting galleries in Denver, are marking you for a football stadium named for Pat Bowlen.
The Bowlen family and the franchise itself are believed to be worth somewhere between 2.4 to 2.8 with a “b” billion dollars.
Former Mayor Wellington Webb, one of the committee members to bring the Olympics to Denver, is urging Broncos fans to belly up and buy the name to establish Pat Bowlen Field at Mile High Stadium. With all due respect, knowing Mr. Bowlen’s inability now to maintain authority with your Denver Broncos my first response was are you jerking me around? You’re kidding, aren’t you?
Then I realized that they weren’t. That local hard-hitting media outlet, Channel 9, totally laid down with how sad it is the HVAC systems and concrete floors need repairs and that there’s part of the parking lot that floods. Who’s zooming who?
It’s hard to get a definable number of how much maintenance it is to take care of Pat Bowlen Field but it ain’t on the cheap and how dare you ruthless bastards make Annabel and the kids pay it out of their own pocket.
Think in these terms. Everybody needs a new roof on their house, pave the driveway, put in a new furnace. Wouldn’t it be great if everybody in your neighborhood had a go fund me page that would totally take care of your yard for you, put on the new roof and what my father used to call storm windows installed? And of course, your paycheck would go just a little bit further because the people in your neighborhood are paying for the maintenance of your home. The Denver Post also thought it was a great idea with an editorial on January 31 titled “Buy back Mile High Stadium’s Heritage.”
My colleague, one of my best friend’s wife Julie Hayden, said, “You mean they want fans to kick in and pay for everything, above and beyond everything else?” Yes, Julie there is a Santa Claus and you’re the mark.
It’s amazing there is something called the Metropolitan Stadium Football District that needs a revenue stream to keep “our” football stadium in top-flight condition. Look on your back see if anybody chalked an “x.”
I leave you with this. Mike Roberts at Westword did a great piece on the Denver Broncos having the second most arrested players in the NFL. I say if you add John Bowlen’s arrest record, after all he is a Bronco, “we’re number one.”
See you on the radio.
— Peter Boyles