I Miss The Days Of Just Being A Denver Broncos Fan

I wish I could go back to being just another Denver  Broncos fan, born and raised in the Denver Metro area.

Now I am a black American male Denver Broncos fan- born and raised in the Denver Metro area.  I never really wanted to become black, but I wasn't really given much of a choice.

I might have known that I was black long before I was forced into accepting it, but I didn't really appreciate the separation of me and my multi-cultural friends who all rooted for the Broncos the same way as kids.  We lost our ever loving, multi-racial minds when Lyle Alzado and Jon Keyworth and them boys went out and made those miracles happen. Even when they lost, Denver Broncos fans remained united with pride and appreciation for our team.

My particular North Denver neighborhood in the 70's made me an unaware minority among the posse of kids my age that included two Mexicans, one white kid and one mixed race kid whose black dad we seldom saw. Moving 10 up the road to North Aurora offered me and my siblings more of the same racial integration'ary ignorance, until those days that we played against the South Aurora white kids in sporting events and started to understand that poverty created a race of people that many whites attempted (and still do) to avoid like the plague.

It would be years before I discovered that "The Jones's" were also middle class white families that hated the white trash label and would live with the same empty refrigerator poverty and hunger that poor folks endure except for the sake of social segregation and stature.  It would also be years before I discovered that  I was no longer just a young man who loved the Denver Broncos like most born and raised Denver kids do, but I was a black man who had grown too tall too fast to remain non-threatening to the public at large.

Mike Brown Jr. had no real control over the body that he was
born into, and the fear that it would invokes in other people.
Neither does Cam Newton. 

Apparently, my really smart black friend who grew faster, stronger and quicker than I did, evoked similar responses when walking in his own neighborhood that just so happened to be a little too South Aurora for two dark skinned, North Aurora looking boys.  I am not sure if my mother warned me about the challenge of dating one of those white girls that kept calling the house before or after that time we got pulled over by the cops for walking the street while black around the corner from my homey's way too nice house, but each occurance shook my identity and innocence. I was forever altered from that time- from that mirror that I never had a reason or a desire to see in that way before.

The image of me that made people afraid probably had me running to the comforts of an Historically Black College.  And yes- it was comforting to go an entire week without seeing any white people except that one white guy on campus who loved him some black foke.

But it wasn't reality.

In reality, I wanted to go back to my Mexican and white people, my white snow, and to being just a Denver Broncos fan and not a black male Denver Broncos fan.  I wanted to hate the hell out of being in college in super black Atlanta, GA when my Broncos lost to that first black quarterback, Doug Williams; but he killed my team, and it was undeniably easy to feel happy for the opportunity that he was creating for so many young black men that play football, but just want to be MEN.

Was Russell Wilson more accepted  than Cam because he is not
 so black looking or because he isn't so brash......or both?

I am not proud of those days when I celebrated OJ's guilty ass getting found not guilty.  By that time, I was made fully aware of my blackness and the retributive fear associated with being black, and at the time, it felt like the triumph of the underdog. With this upcoming football game, there is a similar guilt that this 47 year old black male, Denver native, Broncos fan can't actually lose this upcoming Superbowl because I am  fully represented by the underdogs I'm supporting on both sides of the field.


I am not at all proud that a really small part of me (I was a Broncos fan long before I became black) is rooting for a win by virtue of a loss. But it's real and it's true.

From the day we first met him, Cam Newton has remained the same unabashedly proud black man who just so happens to love the game of football, but refuses to conform himself to the comforts of critics.  Cam has done Cam since the very beginning.  Most of his critics said that he needed to win like Gronk and Brady before he behaved like Gronk and Brady. Now they just don't like him.

I appreciate the example that Cam gives all of us to be unashamedly YOU.  The fact that he happens to be black is something that he and I wish didn't matter so much for NFL quarterbacks, coaches or American presidents. On his team, they refer to him as Obama.  Is he similarly paving the way for a generation of hopeful black men?

What Cam is doing might revive Tim Tebow's career as well as making my young black daughter feel a little more comfortably with being an unashamedly young black woman- even at work.  Life is too short and too full of critics to allow racial, or any criticism, to limit or define you. Cam is not only teaching the world how an athletic quarterback- who might also be black- can succeed in the role, he is showing the masses how to stay true to yourself in whatever you're doing.

Regardless of the games outcome, there is simply no way for this black male Denver  Broncos fan to hate on Cam, or lose this game.