Looking in on Colorado Sports

I call this blog A View from Afar, and when I started it, I mentioned that one of the reasons was that I was looking at the United States from far away in Ukraine.  And in the United States, Colorado is home, so I still try to follow the local professional sports teams.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Avalanche and Broncos gave us four world championships.  The Rockies sucked, but they were still relatively new, so there was hope.  It was a great time to be a Colorado sports fan.

But lately, Colorado sports mostly make me want to cry, or at least be disinterested.

Denver Broncos

The Broncos looked good last season until they got to the Super Bowl, then it was a major embarrassment on par with the "glory days" of the 1980s and early '90s.  Only 12 seconds into the game and Peyton Manning couldn't find the ball, allowing Seattle to score a safety.  And it was downhill from there.

And to get smoked by Seattle - a place overrun by socialists, depressed by constant rain, who need to drink a gallon of Starbucks coffee just to make it through each day.  How can there be real football fans in a place where physical games amount to "bullying" and winning is a sin because it means that some other person will suffer an inferiority complex by having lost?

But I digress.  

OK... so let's forget about the Donkeys.  At least they did switch back to Orange as their predominant jersey color.  That was an improvement.

Colorado Avalanche

Then there is the Avalanche - my favorite team (because hockey is my favorite sport).  They had been in the doldrums for almost a decade.  After the glory years of Sakic, Forsberg, Roy, Foote, Blake, etc., and Stanley Cups in 1996 and 2001, it's been hard to see them fall to the bottom of the heap in the salary-cap era.  Especially when the Detroit Red Wings seemed to have taken the cap restrictions in stride and hummed right along (damned "Dead Things!).

Bad management - that was the problem.  Pierre LaCroix had become like the senile old man pulling the strings from his hiding place in the proverbial tower, a master of wheeling and dealing whose genius turned to insanity with age (hmmm... sounds like Al Davis).  He left the handling of personnel affairs to bean counters and other assorted idiots.

And to rub salt into a fan's wounds, they messed with the uniforms, reducing the beautiful burgundy in favor of more of that sickening shade of blue.  And to rub acid into the salt already in the wound, they dropped the beautiful all-burgundy third jersey for one that is all sickening blue.  Instant vomitization!

But the Avs are definitely showing signs of a comeback.  They actually have a management brain trust in Sakic and Roy that engenders optimism and a feeling that the guys running the hockey side know what they are doing.  And this past season, they were successful beyond anyone's expectations.

They have been drafting well in the past five years, and that is coming to fruition: Duchene, O'Reilly (if they can keep him), Landeskog, McKinnon, and a few others down on the farm.  Thanks to Roy and the goalie coach he brought on board, Semyon Varlyamov has gone from being a bad trade and waste of money to a legitimate star.

So things are looking up on that front.  Can't complain.  But the future remains to be seen.

Still... they need to fix those uniforms.

Colorado Rockies

The Rockies still suck!  They seem to be doing their best to damper interest and drive away fans.  After teasing their fans with a World Series appearance in 2007, in which they were swept in four games by the Red Sox (the team I grew up idolizing), they have pretty much managed to create a worse smell at Coors Field than a hot summer day in Greeley when the wind is blowing in from the Monfort feed lots.  

Interesting mention of Monfort... owner of the hapless Rocks.

This season they are - once again - doing their usual routine of enticing fans with early success, only to lose a whole bunch of game and be completely out of the race by the All-Star break.  They don't seem to have a single pitcher who belongs in the major leagues.  Sad, sad, sad.

I would REALLY like to be able to support the Rockies.  I really would.  But how can anyone support a team that is so poorly run, so cheap, and so devoid of a winning mindset?  The only reason to go to a game at Coors Field seems to be to enjoy the sun, drink some beer, and watch other people through your binoculars.  

I feel really, REALLY bad for Troy Tulowitzki, a true superstar stuck on a team that truly super-sucks!

Other Sports

Well, there really are no other professional sports in Colorado.  OK, so there are the Colorado Rapids soccer team, but c'mon... it's soccer.  And there's that bunch in the "gangsta rapper, drugs and guns" league that occasionally puts their stupid wooden floor over the Avalanche's ice in the Pepsi Center.  But that team, league and sport have not been relevant in Colorado since the days of Alex English, Dan Issel and Fat Lever.  Who cares?

College sports?  Same old, same old.  My CSU Rams, who were great in the 1990s, have fallen into the same loser mold as when I was at the university.  Things might be looking up now, but even still... they will never be a top-tier program.  And the CU Buffaloes?  Oh... please... don't even mention them.  The only thing they are good for is giving the Rams an occasional extra-special win (although last year the Rams didn't take them up on it).

Yeah... it's a sad state of affairs when I look at the Colorado sports scene from over here.  This post has been inspired mainly by the completely UNinspiring play of the Rockies, but the whole scene is pretty wretched.  Only the Avalanche seem poised to offer some relief.

But at least Colorado doesn't have a war going on in its neighboring states.