Prior to his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame tonight in Canton, Floyd Little was interviewed this morning in the Denver Post. As part of the interview Floyd mentioned the other Broncos he felt should be in the Hall with him. While Floyd might have gotten a little carried away (I mean, I like Karl Mecklenberg and all but…) it did bring up one of my long-held gripes: the lack of recognition for the Broncos at the Hall of Fame.

No team that has been consistently strong has so little representation in Canton. Super Bowls in 3 decades. AFC championship game appearances in 4 decades. Yet there are 2 Bronco busts in Canton. Too bad, the Broncos don’t have the PR machine and nationwide fan base of a team like the Steelers who, at this point probably have players that didn’t even start for them represented by one of those Lionel Richie-Hello-video style busts.  

Yes, Shannon Sharpe will be in the Hall soon (though he should already be) and Terrell Davis deserves to go in but won’t thanks to an injury-shortened career. But it is hard to believe they are the only 2 players from the last 30 years are deserving of recognition. Randy Gradishar? Steven Atwater? If they had played in the NFL’s home city of New York they would have already had to put on a ugly yellow blazer and give a speech to thousands of sweating Ohioans.

All of this though is not so much an issue as much as a symptom of a bigger problem. Something I looked at a little over a year ago when the Nuggets made their run through their NBA playoffs.  

Oh and for the record, I still stay at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront regularly and their HD signal has not improved.

A Mile High Elephant in the Room

If you watched Game #4 of the Nuggets / Mavs series on Monday night, you probably had the same thought that I did.

“Who are these announcers?”

Yes, while the Nuggets had an opportunity to sweep the Mavs and secure their first berth in the Western Conference finals since 1985, TNT was so excited they brought in their 43^rd string announcing team of Steve Smith, Marty Snider and Matt Devlin. Better known as ‘that 3-point shooter from Michigan State’, ‘Who?’ and ‘Wait, seriously?’. This was more insulting to Nuggets fans than getting Pam Ward as your team’s college football announcer.

OK, that is unfair to Pam Ward. She is a good announcer, which she could prove if she were allowed to announce a game that didn’t start at noon and involve two Big Ten teams.

It amazed me at the time that TNT couldn’t shift one of the other, better announcing teams to the Nuggets, given that there were no other games that could have been a series ender. 

NOTE: Thanks to the Seattle Waterfront Marriott’s completely random HD signal, I was not able to watch Game #5, so I am not sure this same crew called that as well, though I suspect they did. For some reason TNT was blacked out. This also happens to ESPN HD, whenever a Monday Night Football game is on. This tells you two things: 1 – They wasted a lot of money upgrading every room to a 42-inch LG flat screen and 2 – I have been staying there wwwaayyy too much.

My complaining about announcers is nothing new around here (oh, Tim Tebow how I miss you), so I am not going to. I am instead going to focus on the bigger picture.

It tells me one thing that TNT gave the Nuggets/Mavs series their worst announcers. When you combine that with the general ambivalence among the NBA announcers and experts toward the Nuggets before and throughout these whole playoffs (except for the Round Mound of Rebound, it was great to hear him say by about the 2^nd game of the Hornets series he thought the Nuggets could seriously contend with the Lakers), there is a pretty obvious pattern here.

The national media doesn’t think much of the Nuggets.

Sure, some of this is the residual stink of an organization that was knocked out of the first round five straight years and was one Joe Dumars draft-day screw-up from drafting both Nicholas Tskitishvili and Darko Milicic. But that is the past. This team is pretty good. In case the national folks didn’t notice, the Nuggets have won 8 of their 10 playoff games by something like 16 points per game.

Yet, expect them to be underdogs to the Lakers or Rockets, next series.

I like to style myself a little Langdon-esque, so I am not content to point out something that seems relatively obvious, I like to look for the broader pattern. In this case, the subtle discrimination lobbed at the Nuggets (or not-so-subtle discrimination if George Karl is to be believed), isn’t an isolated thing to me, it is just the latest example of a pandemic sweeping the country.

Denver sports teams are completely disrespected nationally.

The most obvious example of this is the Broncos. One could argue that the Broncos have been probably the second-most consistently successful franchise in the NFL in the ESPN era (think late 1970’s/early 80’s) – or as I like to call it – my sports following life. If you think un-biased about the NFL teams, only the Steelers have been as consistently strong as the Broncos.

You can have your Cowboys (apparently you jumped on the bandwagon after Jimmy Johnson led them to that 1-15 campaign in 1989), Forty-Niners (two words: Alex Smith), or Patriots (see: anything before 2000). The Giants might be the only other team that could make a claim, yet they had the 4^th overall pick as recently as five years ago.

I can hear you responding  ‘well, Dave that is because they were led for the majority of that time by John Elway’. While that is true, it is also true that the Broncos appeared in a Super Bowl five years before Elway brought his buck-teeth to the Mile High City. The Broncos also appeared in an AFC title game five years after he retired. Ask Forty-Niner fans how they have fared before Joe Montana showed up. Or Packer fans about life in the pre-Favreian era. Names like Lynn Dickey or Don Majkowski, ring a bell? Or ask Dolphin fans about their quarterbacks since the Marino era. You will hear names like Cleo Lemon, Jay Fiedler and his long lost brother A.J. Feeley.

So the logical assumption would be that the Broncos are represented in the Hall of Fame, for this sustained period of excellence, right? Well, the Broncos have exactly 1.5 inductees in the Hall of Fame.

NOTE: I count Gary Zimmerman as only one-half of an inductee as he probably would have gotten in, based on his Vikings days alone. Two Super Bowls and blocking for a 2,000 yard rusher were just the sprinkles on ice cream.

By my count, the Steelers have 10 players in the Hall that played for them after 1980. Even the San Diego Chargers have 2 players from that era in the Hall. And since I have memories of the Broncos playing against the Chargers about 5 times a year (with Charlie Jones announcing every game, who, for the record was NBC’s 3^rd string announcer) throughout the Eighties, I can testify that they weren’t that great. How many Super Bowls did they appear in, again?

For some reason, Bronco players have never been appreciated as they should. Whether it was Randy Gradishar and the Orange Crush defense, or Shannon Sharpe (who will be a Hall of Famer but should have been a first balloter) or Rod Smith (as I have been known to rant radio hosts, though it sadly appears all evidence of Michelle Tafoya’s massive crush on me has been erased by ESPN), Bronco players are overlooked in favor of players with bigger names or from bigger markets.

So, you may ask, why is their systemic discrimination against the teams from the Centennial State? Well, I blame the TV networks.

Not in the ‘Tony Kornheiser’s and John Madden’s hero worship are to blame for the fascination with Brett Favre’ or ‘Old white announcers seeing themselves in the clumsy, hardworking play of Tyler Hansbrough’ way though. To understand what I mean, think back to the last time you saw an ad hyping an upcoming episode of a TV show. If you have been watching the NBA playoffs, it shouldn’t be hard to envision a commercial for The Closer.

Now, think to the end of the commercial. What do they say? ‘NCIS, Tuesday at 9 pm eastern and pacific; 8pm central’.

NOTE: I don’t actually watch NCIS so I have no idea what day or time it comes on.

All of the TV networks purposely ignore when a TV show is appearing in one of the four time zones in this country. There are only four time zones; it isn’t like there are twenty. Yet, they only choose to acknowledge three of them (Central Time Zone, you should thank the stars every night for Chicago and Dallas). If that isn’t elitism, I don’t know what is.

It shines the light on a bigger attitude problem. If you are in New York, the Mountain Time Zone doesn’t matter (until you fly out to spend Christmas in Vail, of course).

Is it too much to believe that this attitude pervades the sports world as well? ESPN is located in Bristol, Connecticut. Is it any coincidence, that for years they forced the Yankees and Red Sox down our throats? Out of sight, out of mind.

So, while all of the folks may swing through Denver on the way to the mountains, they don’t think much of the city itself. Witness people coming for the Democratic National Convention last summer shocked we aren’t walking around in cowboy hats and riding horse to work. Though, in fairness Ken Salazar should probably share some blame for that.

Is it any wonder that the media members who help drive the national sports storylines in this country tend to ignore the Mile High City?

Someday, when California has fallen into the ocean, Texas has become an independent country and the Northeast has collapsed into anarchy thanks to the implosion of the financial system in this country, maybe Denver teams will finally get their due.

I can hardly wait.

Especially about Texas becoming another country.

Tagged as: broncos, denver, floyd little, hall of fame, nfl, nuggets