The wider world of sports

“Welcome back, my friends
To the show that never ends
We’re so glad you could attend
Come inside! Come inside!”

– Emerson, Lake, and Palmer

The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat.

I still can’t hear those words without thinking of the agony of defeat, picturing Slovenian ski jumper Vinko Bogataj crashing off the edge of a ski jump. Jim McKay and ABC’s Wide World of Sports brought some of the most amazing, crazy, and dynamic sports events into American homes every weekend for the better part of four and a half decades. Over those weekends, you ended up seeing everything from college football to auto racing, from gymnastics to Greco-Roman wrestling. You didn’t know what curling was? It was on Wide World long before it was an Olympic sport. Like water skiing? Wide World of Sports had the World Championships on every year, clear back in the 1960’s. If you wanted something you’d never seen before, you just needed to check in on Saturday to see what Jimmy Mack was coming in hot with.

Denver is such an incredible town to be a sports fan in, especially if you want to catch any one of your everyday, every year types of sports. Football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, lacrosse, and more are all at your disposal. If you love sports, and want to keep it local, Denver is one of the great places in the world to be.

But sometimes there are windows of time that everything gets special. And if you love sport for the thrill and drama of top-level competition of every sort, this is a moment that won’t come along very often.

The world is very wide with sport right now, with the Winter Olympic games just underway in Beijing, China. When the Men’s hockey team won the 1980 Olympic Gold Medal, the world was entranced by the out-of-nowhere victory. Men’s hockey was one of 38 sports that was being played in those Olympics. 42 years later, Beijing will host 109 different events to showcase the breadth and depth of what is possible in winter sport. The drama of the games less than a week in has been compelling, inspiring, and awesome.

If snow and ice is not your thing, the weekend also brings one of the most-watched and bet-upon moments in sport, Super Bowl LVI, also known as 56 to those of us who struggle with Roman numerals. For the second year running, the home team will play the Super Bowl in their own stadium, with the L.A. Rams at SoFi, and favored over the hotter-than-hell Cincinnati Bengals. If you’re an AFC fan, Joe Burrow and the Bengals bring a lot to love this year, and if you’re more strictly a Broncos fan, you can still watch Vin Miller play in his second Super Bowl. Might he win his second postseason MVP? Sunday you can find out.

If football also isn’t your thing, you probably skipped last weekend’s Pro Bowl in Las Vegas, but  may not have realized Vegas had TWO all star weekends running concurrently. Last weekend’s NHL All-Star set was an incredible display of talent, grit, and speed over a couple days of killer hockey. Capping it all off was a gritty 5-3 win by the Metropolitan Division over the Central Division. Three Colorado Avalanche players were in the game, showing just how skilled this squad is going into the latter half of the season.

If you’re more into basketball, the NBA’s All-Star contest is right around the corner, with the game and skills contests being played the weekend the Winter Olympics wraps up. Denver’s own MVP, Nikola Jokic, will start in his fourth All-Star appearance. The Joker always has an inordinate amount of fun in these contests, and surely this round will be no exception…

And if the only thing that makes you happy is baseball, then… well… I guess at least there is some drama in your life…?

It’s an extraordinary time to be a sports fan, DNVR Nation. There is something for everyone at every turn, and some of the moments exceedingly rare. Drink it in as quickly as you can. This wide world will be so much smaller so very soon.