Bronchos

Bob Howsam, a minor league baseball owner, brought that other one home in 1959, when the American Football League handed him a charter franchise. A statewide contest supplied the name, and the team took the field the following year at Mile High Stadium, where it would stay through 2000.

Those first years gave the city little to cheer: a 39–97–4 record across the AFL era. The 1970 merger with the NFL changed the arithmetic. A first winning season followed in 1973, and by 1977 the Broncos had reached their first Super Bowl.

The breakthrough, when it came, took its time. Dan Reeves took the team to three Super Bowls without winning one. John Elway did what Reeves could not, closing out his career with back-to-back titles under Mike Shanahan — Super Bowl XXXII over the Green Bay Packers, then Super Bowl XXXIII, where Terrell Davis was named the game's most valuable player. Peyton Manning added a third championship in Super Bowl 50.

The stadium changed names more often than the team changed colors. The building that replaced Mile High Stadium in 2001 has carried three corporate titles since, settling on Empower Field at Mile High in 2019, with room for just over 76,000 in Sunset Orange and Midnight Navy. Kansas City has become the rivalry that matters most now, though for years it was the games against the Raiders, often played on Monday nights, that defined the schedule.