Mike Shanahan was in his second year as the head coach of the Denver Broncos in 1996, and the team had to overcome the hold the Kansas City Chiefs, seemed to have on the AFC West—the Chiefs had won the division two of the last three years and made the playoffs each year since 1990.
1996 was a great year to be a sports fan in the Denver area. To begin with, the city got the Quebec Nordiques to relocate and become the Colorado Avalanche, enabling Denver to join the ranks of cities with teams in all four major professional sports leagues—only four years earlier they’d had just the Broncos & Nuggets. Now, with the Rockies and Avalanche, Denver was better off in ’96 than they were four years earlier, an appropriate motto for what was a presidential election year. Things only got better when the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup their first year in town. And football season provided a good dessert to the main course, as the Broncos and the University of Colorado each made spirited runs at the top. TheSportsNotebook looks back on ’96 in the Rockies…