A Love Affair With A Loser

Petry attacked the ticket selling in an unorthodox way. "I'd rather sell 1,000 individuals one ticket each than sell 1,000 tickets to one big company," Petry said. "A sidewalk and country-road alumni is what we want. When it is snowing or the team is not doing well, the individual fan who has bought his own ticket will be at the game."

The announced season-ticket goal of the Broncos is 20,000. On February 15, when the Phipps brothers became majority stockholders, the Broncos had sold 3,357. Last week the total had spiraled up to 17,927, with as many as 921 sold in a single day. The Denver Post carries a front-page box every afternoon showing total sales and the number sold the previous day. Palmer Hoyt, editor and publisher of the Post, has instituted an employees' payroll-checkoff plan under which a person can buy a season ticket for himself for 88� per week and for children under 17 for 44� a week. Twenty-two other companies in Denver have done the same thing.

"A prospering professional football team is a major asset to any community, not only for entertainment but also for its direct and indirect effect on the community's prestige and economy," said Hoyt.

Mark Freeman, a former major league pitcher, is president of the Denver Broncos Quarterback Club. Bronco booster clubs currently are doubling their memberships merely by scheduling meetings. ''I would like to think it was just a pragmatic, businessman's decision that made me get into this drive," Freeman said. "But actually it was because I am a fan. The way the sales have gone has evoked nothing in me but total disbelief. And, of course, pride."

Probably the biggest factor contributing to the Bronco ticket surge is a refinancing, no-service-charge plan started by Ron Hermes, a vice-president of the Peoples Bank in suburban Aurora. When Bank President H. J. Bleakley approved the idea and the Broncos announced it, people began pouring into the bank from all over the state. Under the Hermes plan, a buyer selects a stadium seat and then signs a "Bronco Note." The bank pays the full price of the season ticket—$31.50—to the Broncos. The ticket buyer pays the bank $7.85 down (which includes 35� for mailing and insurance) and the rest in four installments of $6 each. There is no interest on the note. Since Hermes started the idea, nearly 20 other banks and savings-and-loan associations have adopted it.

From merely being on the board of a team that nobody in Denver seemed to care about, the Phipps brothers are suddenly the owners of a team with an almost fanatical fandom. Owning the Broncos means owning Empire Sports, Inc., a corporation that also owns a minor league baseball team called the Denver Bears and the 34,264-seat Bears Stadium, where the Broncos play. Empire Sports got the original Denver football franchise in 1960, when the AFL was organized, and the Broncos put a ludicrous team on the field.

The players were dressed in uniforms with socks that had vertical stripes. They were ashamed to leave their locker rooms, and often looked more interested in hiding their socks than in winning a game. They would come out for the kickoff like ladies surprised at their bath. They had no play books. Sometimes the quarterback simply squatted on the ground and drew the play with his finger. After Denver's first extra-point conversion, the general manager ran into the stands and wrestled the ball away from a fan. The Broncos did not sign enough draft choices to fill a closet. But in 1961 Kunz, a former Marine Corps colonel in combat in the South Pacific, formed a syndicate lo buy Empire Sports, and Gerry Phipps became chairman of the board.

The Phippses are a wealthy, old-line, respected Denver family related to the more widely known horse-owning Phipps clan of New York. Allan Phipps, a lawyer, and Gerry were active in Denver civic affairs, but neither took much of a role in operation of the Broncos until last fall, when Manager- Coach Jack Faulkner was fired and Mac Speedie became the Denver coach. Then, suddenly, the Phippses moved to the foreground in an effort to rally the morale of the team and the public.

"Why do we want to keep the Broncos in Denver?" Gerry Phipps, a tall, graying, pinch-waisted man, asked last week. "I could sell out and make a potful of money. We're not kidding ourselves that this will ever be a gold mine here. But we're trying to attract industry to this community. Nothing would hurt us more than headlines around the country saying Denver had lost its football team. I would be cutting my own throat if I did something that would set back the community, and if we can sell 20,000 season tickets we can break even financially."

Gerry Phipps brushes off any possible objection to Denver by NBC, which insists it would never object anyhow. " Green Bay is the No. 1 attraction in the NFL nationwide," he said. "Because of community support here, we can be in pretty much the same position in the AFL. We've got to start winning games, but we've got the fans now. We haven't done any good at all selling tickets at the Denver Country Club or Cherry Hills, the status places. But we've done very well in appealing to the little man. Our Quarterback Club is full of guys in service-station uniforms. The Broncos will be their alma mater. I know we're going to have to have a bigger stadium. We can't really compete unless we have 50,000 seats. I think what we'll do is add on to the stadium we have. We pay about $250,000 per year in maintenance and taxes, plus servicing the debt that was there when we took over in 1961 and the debt we've added. When I think of how the Kansas City Chiefs were paying a dollar a year for a stadium and Buffalo $5,000 a year while getting 13�% of the concessions it's not easy to forget all the problems we've had. But we're on our way to success now."