NFL Fan North of the Border

For those people who truly know me, they are obviously aware of me being a die-hard Denver Bronco football fan! Excluding a seven-year stint when my wife and I were fortunate to call Colorado home, the majority of my life has been spent in south-central Kansas, which is right smack-dab in the middle of Kansas City Chiefs country. Given this predicament, my extreme dislike for the Chiefs is a constant high, and I can guarantee you that I love it when the Broncos beat the Chiefs much more than say a person who was born and raised in the great state of Colorado. As much as I would love to spend each and every day writing posts for Predominantly Orange or practicing my golf game, duty calls and I have a full time job as a supervisor that, occasionally, takes me north of the border to Montreal, Canada. While these trips disrupt my normal routine and take me away from my family, the silver lining is that I get a slight break from residency in Chiefs Country and the Chief fans that reside there. NOT THIS TIME! For my latest excursion to Montreal and a run in with a Canadian Chief fan, please continue reading.

While on a break from the week long meeting that took me to Montreal, a fellow supervisor excitedly shared that he had a person in his group I needed to meet, because he was a Bronco fan. Stop the press….. did I just hear there was a Bronco fan in Montreal, Canada?! Montreal, Canada, a city where people live and die with the Montreal Canadians, has a Bronco fan! I will not go as far as saying I felt like I had died and gone to Heaven, but it was close. I love the Broncos, and I love it when an opportunity exists to meet other Bronco fans…. die-hard fans especially, because we can relate to the passion and excitement we feel for the team in orange and blue. People who aren’t Bronco fans don’t understand and think we’re a bit off, but we can live with that. I told my fellow supervisor that before we met this individual, I would have to grab my iPad in order to share the many, many Bronco pictures I have accumulated over the past few seasons while using my Bronco season tickets!

Finally, the work day came to an end and up to the fourth floor of our building we went, so I could meet a Bronco fan who resides in Montreal, Canada – 1,633 miles away from the Mile High City! Introductions were made, and for some strange reason, the “Bronco fan” that I was introduced to was somewhat silent and had a confused look on his face. It was then that the week-long business trip took a major turn for the worse. The person sitting directly in front of me, who I was told was a Bronco fan, proceeded to utter words that I will have a hard time forgetting! “I’m not a Bronco fan, I like the Kansas City Chiefs,” the employee stated. NOOOOOOOOO! It is bad enough that I have to spend a week away from home, then to have my excitement and adrenalin rush of meeting a fellow-Bronco fan dashed with an encounter with a Chiefs fan was the final straw!

In a joking sort of way, I told the Canadian Chiefs fan that typically when you meet an individual, you close the conversation with a common phrase along the lines of “it was a pleasure to meet you,” but I made it very clear I would not be using those words on this day. As far as I am concerned, it is never a pleasurable experience to meet a Chief fan! As I look back on this event, I am perplexed that of all the teams in the NFL, this individual had to be a fan of the one team I despise the most. It is as if the football gods woke up from a four month nap and pulled out a list of Bronco fans to torment and for whatever reason, my name was at the top of the list.

Don’t worry citizens of Bronco Country, because I am a die-hard fan, I am willing and able to go toe-to-toe with any fan of another team. Die-hard fans are just that, die-hard, and we are in it for the long haul; not just a season or two here and there. I am amazed at how fans of other teams love to bring up Super Bowl XLVIII and how poorly the Broncos played! I have to agree with them because the Broncos did look unprepared on February 2, 2014, but they did perform well enough to get there. Not that getting there is justifiable in any way and will ever replace winning the Super Bowl. My boss, who is a transplanted resident of the United States, and claims to be a Chief fan, loves to bring up the Broncos Super Bowl performance. Funny, how the playoff game the Chiefs played in Indianapolis where they blew a 28 point lead somehow seems to have not only escaped his memory, but the memory of most Chief fans.

I hold no ill-feelings toward the Canadian Chief fan at all – not everyone has to be a Bronco fan! I learned that he has never been to Arrowhead but wants to desperately go one of these days. I conveniently shared that I attended the 1998 divisional playoff game at Arrowhead when the Denver Broncos ended the Chiefs season by beating them 14-10, plus many other regular season games between the Broncos and Chiefs. In fact, I told him I had really been to Arrowhead more times than I care to remember, because it is difficult for a fan, like me, to spend an afternoon around so many Chief fans.

The Montreal supervisor who initiated this conversation was shocked and sincerely felt badly that he had led me down the wrong path. The next morning he shared that while driving home, reality hit him – it wasn’t his employee who was a Bronco fan, but his employee’s best friend. Like supervisors do, we immediately clarified the situation and the Canadian Chief fan confirmed his friend was a Denver Bronco fan! As it turns out, the Canadian Bronco fan owns a number of Bronco jerseys and subscribes to NFL Sunday Ticket. Now, that is the Canadian I look forward to meeting!

I am back home now and survived the week in Montreal. As mentioned earlier, home these days is in Chiefs Country, but that is much easier to accept considering football season starts in about a month, which means that Colorado trips aren’t that far away. Because I have been a Bronco season ticket holder for 20+ years, I am in the midst of planning my Bronco trips for the upcoming season. I haven’t finalized any of my trips for this season, but believe me when I say this – after the situation I endured in Canada two weeks ago, the first trip can’t happen soon enough!

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