Just my take: Cracking the mystery of Denver’s out of state fans with a little help from the 12’s

Denver is the nation’s foremost sports town but more and more we’re seeing our stadiums and arenas overrun by fans of opposing teams. It’s been chalked up to poor product on the field (the Rockies) or a dry spell in popularity (the Colorado Avalanche), and enemy fans have filled those seats much to the chagrin of those who have toughed out the lean years putting up with their nonsense.

Fans of Denver sports teams are diehards and there wasn’t a logical reason for this fan imbalance. But now I think I figured it out and we can all thank an unlikely source for this insight: the obnoxious fan base of the Seattle Seahawks.

When the Seattle Seahawks battled the Detroit Lions a few weeks ago on Monday Night Football, I was struck, like most of you, with a wave of nausea as the broadcast slobbered all over the fans, or the “12s” as they have without shame named themselves. But I got to thinking about why Seattle fans were considered such bandwagonners and the genesis of their rise to prominence and it made me realize what has happened in Denver.

Seattle was a transplant city much like Denver is now, but it happened 25 years ago. When Microsoft set up shop just outside Seattle in Redmond, Washington, it facilitated a tech boom that brought droves of transplants to the Pacific Northwest from all over the country. But with these people being nerds, they didn’t really have any sports allegiances and with the Seahawks being the perpetual also-rans of the AFC West, interest in the team dwindled even more.

The Seahawks played its first game in 1976 and pretty much sucked up until a few years ago. Long a fixture of the AFC West, the Seahawks took leave of getting throttled by the Broncos and Raiders and joined the NFC West in 2002. That’s over a quarter century of futility before anyone actually cared about the team. I lived in Seattle in the early 90’s and I never saw any Seahawks logos or anyone wearing gear. They were a non-entity back when Seattle’s economy and population was mid-boom.

The tech geeks didn’t really care about the Seahawks one way or the other. But the children of those geeks who grew up in the Seattle area, and didn’t have any ties to a sports team, slowly developed one with the Seahawks. Flash forward to the team suddenly becoming good a few years back and you have a ready and willing fan base, with ties to the area who are ready to climb aboard the bandwagon. It explains a lot. Including why all of the Seahawks hats are new and why none of the fans knew the team was in the AFC West.

Denver too was a bit of a transplant city in the 80’s but the Broncos have been a good team most of this time so fans of different teams couldn’t get a foothold. Aside from the Nuggets, it was the only game in town, so you either liked the Broncos or you shut the hell up about it. And just like Seattle, the children of those people who came here in the 80’s are now Broncos fans. But why is it different now?

Sports fans can follow their team anywhere these days. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Cleveland Browns fan living in Lakewood: you can watch your team play every week, read the Plain Dealer, listen to Cleveland sports talk on your phone and get all of the info about the team as if you lived there. You don’t have to be a Broncos fan in Denver because you have choices. Transplants are now clinging to their old teams, filling seats at Denver sporting events and inoculating their kids against being Denver sports fans because they now have the choice to do so.

And that’s why you see so many fans of other teams at Denver home games. Success may have something to do with it at Avs games, but I don’t recall the sheer volume of opposing team fans back in the late 90’s heyday that I see now. The team hasn’t been good for a while but fast forward 14 years since the last Cup win and now you’re seeing what the transplant epidemic and technological access has done for one Denver team. Oh and the Blackhawks were terrible back then.

Seattle is lucky because its football team became good, or actually was bad, at just the right time. And now a willing fan base in search of a team has found common ground in rooting for a winner. Denver isn’t so lucky because its boom has happened at very poor time where population growth has collided with those technological breakthroughs that encourage enemy fans to be major pains in the ass.

Parents indoctrinate their children into liking their sports teams and I understand that, but that influence will eventually erode as they mature, learn to hate their parents and want to get on board with what their friends are doing. I spoke to a couple of transplant parents from my kid’s school and they confirmed that they did root for their trash teams in their household but that their kids also had an affinity for the Denver teams. So while it may be ugly for a few more years, once these kids grow up in the Denver sports environment, the tide may turn back.

So for now, enjoy obnoxious Cubs fans at Coors Field and felonious Red Wings fans at Pepsi Center. But sleep well knowing that at some point those philistines’ children will ultimately disappoint them by rooting for one of your beloved local Colorado sports teams. And that’s a band wagon I will gladly climb on.