The matter of still mattering

In 1860, with the founding of the Pony Express, the company became the icon of American ingenuity and possibility, reducing the time the mail took between the Eastern states and the suddenly very important state of California. The business established was massive, with nearly 200 stations between Missouri and California, manned at its height by a contingent of 6,000 men, tens of thousands of horses and oxen, with wagons and accoutrement to match. The service was so indispensable during their heyday that they could afford to charge a 25,000% markup on regular mail of the time.

The Pony Express was the stuff or lore and legend. Buffalo Bill Cody rode for them, and while riding through weather, wars, and conditions that would terrify any sane human. Movies were made about them, and their mark on society means that most people still have some idea about who they were in casual conversation today. They had momentarily radically advanced communications between the coasts. 20 years earlier, the death of President William Henry Harrison had taken 110 days to reach Los Angeles. The Pony Express got the news of President Lincoln’s death to California in just over seven days.

Not bad for a business that lasted all of 18 months, and was killed by a wire.

When the transcontinental telegraph came into play, that communication gap became all but instantaneous. The Pony Express became so quickly obsolete, they shut their doors two days after the telegraph’s completion. They simply ceased to matter.

You wonder if any of the guys taking the horses back after the closure said, “Let’s ride.”

There were nothing but good intentions in place when the Denver Broncos set forth to overcome their own recent bouts with irrelevance, after a lengthy family battle over ownership and a sometimes confusing approach to the roster. Now seven seasons removed from a winning record, and eight from their last Championship, the Broncos appear to have mortgaged their foreseeable future to have had the Peyton Manning salad days, something they had hoped to finally be recovering from after years of courting a once-rabid fanbase that is rapidly showing more and more apathy.

It was hard not to get your hopes up when so many aspects of a tepid football team shifted over this offseason. From the richest ownership base in sports to an offensive guru at the head coaching position to a quarter-billion dollar investment in one of the surest sure-thing quarterbacks in the game, the Broncos dug deep. Came up with what was needed. Maybe not to immediately re-take the wild, wild AFC West, but to at least come back to relevance. At least be a part of the conversation again. The Broncos sets of salad days in the league may truly be the greatest source of civic pride and harmony we experience in Colorado. The evidence that was being built back was palpable. Thrilling. Damned near intoxicating.

While it’s still too early to be sure the sky is actually falling around Broncos Country, the Broncos could have never seen this particular outcome coming. At its very best, this first season might be salvaged by a winning record or a playoff game, but even those goals seem relatively outsized with the way the team has stumbled out of the gates in the easiest part of their season. That lofty-and-yet-underwhelming goal is what this season could be at its best for these Broncos.

At its worst? Well, at its worst, this Broncos leadership team has just saddled itself with an albatross of a contract that even their extra-deep pockets will have a hard time circumnavigating. To build one of the most relevant defenses in football and pair it with an offense that is somehow even more historically inept. It’s hard to believe that this team will turn enough things around – at least in this season – to even be a part of the larger national conversation.

But the local conversation? That’s the even larger risk. When the Broncos first came to prominence in Colorado, they were quite literally one of the only games in town when it came to entertainment. When John Elway arrived and made the Broncos an immediate part of the national conversation, the Denver Nuggets were still as middling as ever, the Rockies hockey team was literally packing their bags for jersey, and the Rockies baseball team was still 10 years away. Denver’s population was half its current size, and there were simply fewer things to go out and do.

But ask any football fan in a major metropolitan area what happens when the football team they used to love works its way to lasting mediocrity. Ask a Jets fan. A Rams fan. A Giants fan. A Niners fan. The people come back when the team is relevant again, but when they’re not? Hell, the championship Rams can’t even fill their at-home Super Bowl winning stadium again five games into the following season. The Rams are 2-3, just like the faltering Broncos. A fickle fanbase? Maybe so. But when that expensive an experience can be supplanted by any number of options… Who can you really blame?

So now that Denver has a multitude of sports options, not just the big four, but soccer and lacrosse and collegiate games galore. Now that Denver has a massive arts complex, a thriving dining scene, and a variety of options as diverse as Meow Wolf, the aquarium, and Wash Park. To have LoDo and RiNo and Bears… at the zoo… oh my.

Make no mistake, the Denver Broncos will forever have a passionate and loyal fanbase, and there is no other football team coming to town to replace or supplant them. They won’t suffer the sheer obsolescence of the Pony Express, as there isn’t anything coming to literally kick them out. But relevance? If these Broncos aren’t careful, they’ll suffer the much more meaningful loss of losing their place in the hearts, minds, and conversations of a larger group of fickler fans that are tired of watching mistake after mistake. Bungle after bungle. The multiple shots of the fans throughout last Thursday night’s game with their head in their hands, faces in shock, or one woman exclaiming loudly into the pre-commercial camera, “You’ve got to be f—ing KIDDING me!!!” should be terrifying and telling to the Broncos organization trying to sell tickets. The sight of the bulk of those same fans filing to the exits before the deciding overtime should be what fully seals the deal.

This team has worn out a seemingly bottomless well of free passes from Broncos Country, and the number amongst that fanbase who are still apologists for how this is going are dwindling quickly. The Broncos may still be able to find a way to turn this thing around. What they should be most concerned about is hoping enough people will still care when they do. Obsolete? Never. Relevant? We shall see.