By Mike Kahn
CBS SportsLine Executive Editor
Sept. 7, 1998
DENVER -- As if this town needed any more reason to love their Broncos, there now is a Super Bowl trophy to relish.
As a local millionaire who sold his car dealership this year so he could concentrate on the Broncos a little more, John Elway understands it best.
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Elway couldn't resist one more shot at the Super Bowl.
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"We love being on top," Elway said. "Everybody is gunning for us."
That's not a bad thing.
With Mile High Stadium threatening to sink from age, the city and owner Pat Bowlen are working on a deal for new digs -- matching what was received by the baseball Rockies and the new arena for basketball and hockey.
Denver, you see, is anything but provincial. It's a city that thrives on being low key, yet on the cutting edge at the same time. And it's more than just cowboys in luxury pickup trucks.
"This is a city that will support anything that has a chance to succeed," Bowlen said. "The way the fans have backed the Broncos all these years . . . winning the Super Bowl had to happen. Not just for John, but for them."
THE BRONCOS ARE STILL SYNONYMOUS WITH THE face and arm of Elway. If anything, it was Elway who transformed Denver into a major city. Or . . . Elway and the Rocky Mountains deserve at least equal billing.
It isn't just the winning of the Broncos, Elway's car dealership and putting some of those riches back into the community -- he's everywhere here. So is his family. When his wife, Janet, recently had health problems, he was gone from the team with the same quickness of leaving the pocket -- her battery of tests at the Mayo Clinic precluding anything else in life.
His commitment to everything here has raised the consciousness level.
"You just don't see athletes of that magnitude stay anywhere for 16 years," Broncos public relations director Jim Saccomono said. "Part of it is this era of sports. Most of it is John. His special qualities have just covered the region since 1983."
He will begin his 16th and final season in the NFL Monday night against the New England Patriots, who have been nothing more than patsies for the Broncos during Elway's career. They've won here at about the same pace as Bowlen has attempted to sell the team . . . every once in a blue moon.
IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT THE BRONCOS won Super Bowl XXXI just as Terrell Davis became a superstar running back to compliment Elway.
"Terrell changed everything," Elway said. "It changed the way I looked at a game and it changed the way teams had to play us. With Terrell as the focal point, it makes everybody else's job easier."
There was more to the Broncos busting out last year than that. They revamped their defense again, comparable to the 'Orange Crush' quality of a generation ago. They did well growing beyond Dan Reeves, whose temperament and concepts too often clashed with Elway. Bowlen had the vision to bring back Elway's favorite quarterback coach Mike Shanahan to replace Reeves.
That, too, relieved pressure from Elway.
"We (Elway and Shanahan) see things the same way," Elway said. "When you have the same approach to the game, there is a comfort zone. The odds of execution go way up when the quarterback and coach are almost always on the same page."
THE BIGGER QUESTION IS HOW THIS CITY at the foot of the Rockies will cope without Elway steering the Broncos out of trouble and into Super Bowls, as he has done five times.
As Elway has grown up, so has Denver. When he arrived, the Nuggets had yet to be in the NBA for an entire decade, while the Rockies and Avalanche had not yet been born. Skiing still remains the No. 1 pastime for the locals. But it has diversified greatly into a big city.
There is this perspective of the retirement parties that often go on in the NBA and in baseball, with gifts and retrospective tapes and tears from opponents at each stop of the final tour. That doesn't happen in the NFL. This is not a sport built on sentiment, despite the Broncos being the fan favorites over the Packers in Super Bowl XXXI strictly out of this romantic notion that Elway deserved it.
Both Denver newspapers still run special sections every Sunday on the Broncos -- with Elway getting one of his own on the eve of this final season as the captain of their ship. He walks so gingerly these days on aching knees, and his ribs have more cracks than any downtown sidewalk, but still he marches on.
What we know is this, for everything that he has meant to Denver, the city has meant just as much to Elway.
"I just couldn't imagine playing this year," Elway said. "Training camp was tough . . . but I knew the games were coming. It's such a big part of me . . . the games and this city. I just had to go through it one more time."
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