When the Denver Broncos lost the AFC Championship game to the New England Patriots, 10-7, due to a brief snow storm that produced unplayable offensive conditions in the second half, we all assumed that coach Sean Payton’s complaints about the weather and the possibility of playing with a retractable roof were just venting.
Maybe not, though. The Broncos have been making plenty of noise locally about getting a new stadium, and part of the reason owner Greg Penner purchased a significant minority share in the Colorado Rockies could be about smoothing out the path to make that happen.
The Rockies have one of the most enviable stadium situations in pro sports. Their home park, Coors Field, has a reputation as being both a tourist attraction and a notable party spot in Denver, which means fans will pack the place regardless of how bad the team is in any given year.
The Monforts may not know how to run a baseball team effectively, but they do know how to use a stadium to make money. Coors Stadium is a beautiful facility, and it’s still a great place to watch a game as long as you stick to the food and libations and don’t focus too much on the performance of the team.
Most of the focus locally in Denver is about Penner and his wife, Carrie Walton Penner, maintaining their current roles with the Broncos and not interfering with the daily operation of the Rockies, according to Parker Gabriel of the Denver Post.
But Penner and Broncos president Damani Leech also “turned up the pressure on the club’s Burnham Yard stadium project,” Gabriel noted as they talked about their new $175 million team headquarters nearing completion. The Broncos will move into their new complex in June.
It’s not hard to connect the dots here if you read between the lines a little. The Monforts have been running Coors Field for years, so they know all the key players when it comes to stadium-related issues, and those connections could save the Broncos plenty of time and money. It’s the kind of smart, savvy move that could also indirectly help the performance of the team on the field if the process continues to progress smoothly.
Sometimes it’s the smaller things that bear watching when it comes to the way a franchise like the Broncos is run behind the scenes, and it points to yet another reason the team has improved so quickly on the field since Payton came on board.