A nightmare to forget

Devoted Broncos fans, Arapahoe County Commissioner Nancy Doty, right, and her husband Wayne Brady, attended the Super Bowl in hopes to see their team win, but got a lot of unexpected experiences instead. Photo courtesy of Nancy Doty

‘Super Bumble’ memories of a county commissioner

By Tom Barry

Everyone has heard the good, the bad and the ugly about the Broncos’ nightmare at the Super Bowl – and here’s another story from the bad file.

Arapahoe County Commissioner Nancy Doty, an avid fan and season ticket holder, had attended the Broncos’ last playoff game with her husband Wayne Brady. After the team’s victory against the New England Patriots, the couple decided to purchase tickets to the Super Bowl.

Doty and Brady paid a pretty penny to Ticketmaster to purchase two seats 31 rows from the Broncos’ end zone. After all, they would be part of what was anticipated to be one of the best and closest games ever.

“There was only a slight chance that the Broncos would lose,” Brady said. “Who would ever have thought that the Broncos would have lost?

“We are huge Broncos fans, and in lieu of a trip somewhere nice and warm, we did this,” Doty explained.

The couple left Denver a day early to beat the impending snowstorm of Jan. 31. Upon their arrival, Doty and Brady heard Seattle fans everywhere loudly cheering “Seahawks, Seahawks!”

The Bronco fans were more subdued, Doty said.

“It was just shocking to see the sea of people. It was equally as shocking that the organizers did not have a better way to handle all the crowds,” she said.

On Feb. 1, the adventurous couple ventured to Broadway, which had been renamed Super Bowl Boulevard.

“We went to Madison Square Garden and it was a disaster too. You could not move for 13 blocks,” Doty said.

A ‘Super’ day that never happened

On Feb. 2 at noon, the couple left their hotel in Red Bank, N.J., for a three-hour trek to MetLife Stadium, battling hordes of humanity along the way at the Secaucus subway stop, a main transit hub, as nearly everyone had to utilize public transportation to get to the big game.

As it happened, the team was out of sync from the first play and it went south from there as fans kept waiting for the Broncos to gain momentum.

Some dismayed Broncos fans left during the third quarter when they saw the writing on the wall.

“It didn’t make much difference that we got seats in the corner of the Broncos end zone, as they didn’t spend much time there,” Doty said.

Toward the end of the game, Doty noticed a Broncos fan crying a few rows below. She went down to console the woman, telling her that the team had had an exceptional season

“They lost the Super Bowl,” the woman lamented.

Doty and Brady stuck it out for most of the game, leaving the stadium with just minutes remaining – but still an adventure ahead of them.

“It took us four hours to get to the hotel,” Doty said. “There were solid crowds of people everywhere. We finally arrived back at our hotel at 2 a.m., four hours later.”

Adding insult to injury, as the couple was checking out of their hotel on Feb. 3, they learned that their Southwest Airlines flight to Denver had been cancelled.

They were able to book a flight late the next afternoon from LaGuardia Airport.

On the balance, was it all worth the trip to New York?

“I guess you could say that yes – as a Monday morning quarterback – we could have spent a week in Greece or on a two-week cruise,” Doty said with a laugh.