Yosemite Sam is a puddy tat compared to Yosemite Stan. Any mug can swear like a sailor during a Broncos game. Stan Jacobsen swears like an artist. If a ball’s flung deep in Riley Moss’s direction, best cover your ears.
“You can’t really be yourself,” Jacobsen, a semi-retired Broncomaniac, told me with a chuckle, “when you have a bunch of people around.”
So he doesn’t. Stan, who’s actually a very nice man when the Broncos aren’t on TV, will watch Bo Nix and Sean Payton try to Houdini their way to 11-2 Sunday against the Raiduhs (2-10) alone. Mostly. When times get tough, and they will, Stan can always turn the friend he keeps on the table to his right, just within arm’s reach.
About 10 years ago, Jacobsen’s daughter-in-law was brave enough to sit through three hours of the Broncos with Yosemite Stan. A short while later, she gifted him a stuffed stress-relief doll perfect for those Sundays when the orange and blue turn him red.
It’s a little cloth guy clad in a black-and-white referee’s shirt, with the words “DAMMIT REF” written along the shoulders. For the last three months, as you might imagine, Stan’s been kicking the crapola out of the thing.
“How often have you been choking that ref doll?” I wondered.
“Every time we get one of those pass interference calls,” Stan replied. “I guess I almost destroyed it on the leverage play against the Colts.”
Still, he’s loving this team. Loving this defense. Loving this bonkers, bizzarro season. Jacobsen does have a request for Payton and Nix, though, a sentiment shared by a lot of Broncos Country these days.
“I’m rooting for them, especially this week, to give me a break (against the Raiders),” Stan said. “And let me have a little enjoyment the second half, instead of being on the edge of my seat.”
These Broncos might soothe the soul. They’re holy hell on your heart.
Thanks to a Looney Tunes, 27-26 victory at Washington last Sunday night, Denver has won nine straight. At some point, the Broncos trailed in every one of those games — becoming the first NFL team to win nine in a row while behind in all nine contests.
In five of those victories, the Broncos were either tied or trailing at the start of the fourth quarter. Late last Sunday night, on an all-or-nothing Commanders 2-point conversion try in overtime, Denver outside linebacker Nik Bonitto got free and batted down a Marcus Mariota pass, one of the wildest finishes in a season full of them.
Jacobsen bleeds orange and blue through every artery. It’s just that he had three stents put into those bad boys 14 years ago. After the first two, Stan had a heart attack right there on the operating table, so they had to wait on the third.
“They put the wrong kind in, so they had replace one of them in 2018, or some darn thing like that,” said Stan, 82 years young and looking forward to a birthday next month.
“I figured it’s not that big a deal. The heart’s pretty easy to take care of — they’ve got replacement valves and all that stuff. The big C-word (cancer), that’s the tough one.”
‘Avoid Raiders fans’
Could the Broncos please stop killing us softly, though? For one weekend, at least?
“It depends on how invested in the game you are,” Dr. Patrick Green, a cardiologist at UC Health’s Heart and Vascular Clinic’s Harmony Campus in Fort Collins, told me by phone Friday. “With any source of interest emotionally, there’s an increased risk of a cardiac event. Sporting events and close games can certainly trigger that.”
Dr. Green referred me to a study of German soccer fans during the 2006 World Cup. Data collected from hospitals in Munich showed that cardiac emergencies around that corner of Deutschland were 2.4 times greater on days in which the German national soccer team was playing, compared to non-match days.
“We’re heading down to the end of the season and the playoffs, so yeah, this is a stress test,” Green said. “Everybody needs to get ready and to be prepared.”
While Green said he hadn’t heard of any increased heart cases on fall Sundays north of town, the stress is real.
Over at Sportsfan, the jersey and merchandise chain with a store a block away from Empower Field, one of the unexpectedly hottest sellers of the autumn has been these tiny, squishable blue Broncos “stress” footballs.
Since June, owner Derek Friedman noted, he’s sold out of the stuff at least twice and had to re-order those balls five different times.
“We haven’t been able to keep them in stock,” he said.
The Sportsfan store on Federal now has full bin of those balls on display near the register, with dozens more stacked up in a warehouse behind the storefront.
And if a stuffed referee doll or a blue stress football helps keep your blood pressure down, Dr. Charles Tharp suggested a few days ago, then seek one out, by all means. On the flip side …
“No smoking, never,” Tharp, a cardiologist at Denver Health and lifelong Broncos fan, continued. “Avoidance of alcohol (helps). And then trying to be in a more calm, more productive environment, if that’s what you’re hoping to do.
“I think that the other thing that’s important is to probably not watch the game with opposing fans.
“Avoid Raiders fans, especially.”
‘My heart is getting stronger’
Yosemite Stan figured that last part out a long time ago, brother. Jacobsen doesn’t mess around. Stan was a three-year football letterman at South Dakota State from 1961-63. A two-way plugger for the Jackrabbits as a nose guard/guard, with the battle scars to prove it.
In ’63, his Jackrabbits visited big, bad Nebraska, Bob Devaney’s first Big Eight championship bunch. During a 58-7 loss, Stan reached inside one of those old two-bar facemasks of a Cornhuskers player and broke that Bugeater’s noggin. He also, um, permanently mangled his right pinkie in the process.
When you’ve shaken hands with only four good fingers for six decades, it takes more than a ticky-tack flag against Indianapolis to spoil the party.
Although even a good man’s ticker can take only so many games decided by a placekicker.
“Ever since 2015, (the Broncos) had close ballgames, and we got losses. Now? Now we’re getting wins,” Jacobsen laughed with a growl loud enough to wake the football gods. “So my heart is getting stronger.”