Sports dollars – A Fickle Pickle

The second-worst sunburn of my life was borne out of a bad combination of my love of sports and sheer stupidity. Many of my nearest and dearest would argue that those two things are one and the same. On that day, they may have been right.

As a kid in Fort Collins, I spent a day standing outside of Moby Arena for several hours, trying to watch the Denver Broncos Training Camp that was taking place just south of the building. I’d arrived early, not knowing that there were only certain hours fans were allowed to watch the camp, and so I’d walked a few hundred feet away to try and spy anything I could. I stood in the sun all day before the afternoon fan session, and could feel the heat radiating off of me by the time I got to ask a few players for signatures.

I can only find one of those signatures now, and it still makes me sick. And that for a couple reasons. It reminds me of how ill I was that night and the next day from sun exposure, and also how much value a dumb kid can suck out of a pristine Lyle Alzado signature by drawing a Broncos helmet on it with markers. Oof. That next sick day was spent in a new Broncos jersey I’d saved a long time to buy, and carefully peeled off my sunburned self every time I ran to get sick. If you ask me, it was all worth it. One and the same.

For years, the larger portion of Colorado sports fans have spent their love and hard-earned dollars on the Broncos first, and whatever other team was fashionably hot in the moment second. Even those whose first allegiance falls with the Avalanche, Nuggets, or Rockies often mete out those precious dollars on a high-ticket item like a jersey or autograph. For most of Colorado sports fans, the dollars they spend on outward Colorado sports pride will go to the team that is showing themselves to be shiniest. It’s a fickle market at best.

And that’s the pickle right now. Who will step up and show themselves to be the hot ticket item for an event-starved home-bound crowd?

Heading into the weekend, the Denver Broncos are sitting at home during the playoffs for the fifth straight season, with the last four of those shy of a .500 record. It will take more than that to submarine the lifeblood of the true Broncos faithful, but it’s hard to imagine the team’s schwag sales haven’t taken a sizable hit over the bloodletting.

It’s been even tougher for the Colorado Rockies, who have less good credit to fall back upon with their fanbase. While it’s only been three seasons since they were in the playoffs and above .500, the Rox have been in a difficult spiral over the last couple seasons, and don’t look to be pulling back out of it quickly. If you’re not a hardcore Rockies fan, you’ll probably swallow hard before dropping any serious coin on a jersey of a guy who might not even be here soon.

The two teams that are playing right now were supposed to be taking advantage of this attention gap from the other two, but also can’t seem to get out of their own way out of the gates.

The Denver Nuggets just came out of a Cinderella-style bubble appearance, but the clock has decidedly hit midnight on their inbound season. While they have found their way back to a .500 record twice in the last three games, they’re off to a decidedly slower start than anyone anticipated. While Nikola Jokic is front-and-center in the early MVP conversation, the rest of the squad has been hot and cold in the extreme. Odds are decent they’ll put it together a little better by season’s end, but they’ve not struck upon this opportunity early.

Speaking of probably putting it together… The Colorado Avalanche stumbled out of the gates in their first game against St. Louis, with a chance to make it up tonight after sleep-skating against the Blues on Wednesday. The Avs are early-season favorites for the Stanley Cup, so a single loss is the least scary thing happening to any of Denver’s Big Four, but the team would be wise to leverage this wide-open moment for adoration and jersey sales.

Amazingly, none of this amazingly bland moment in Colorado sports is deeply impacting one of the most-easily measured markers, as ticket sales are at zero across the board while we all stay home. But for these teams that are already hard-hit by the loss of those seats and concessions, there may have never been a more important time to be pulling down as many memorabilia sales as they can.

It’s all slowed to a trickle. Are you a fickle fan, DNVR reader? Do you find yourself in a pickle looking for the Mile High team to proudly hang your hat on? Where do you spend your sports nickel these days?