S.F. Examiner: Broncos win for Manning, send bouquet to Bowlen

February 08, 2016 by Art Spander in articles, football

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

“The best laid plans …” You know the rest, words from a poem by Bobby Burns, the Scot who more than a century ago wrote words of warning, words telling us that our hopes and dreams more often do not work out. Or as Burns wrote, “ ..gang oft a-gley,” or as we would say, go often astray.

But not the plans of John Elway. Or the hopes of Peyton Manning. Or the long-ago dreams of the family of Pat Bowlen.

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S.F. Examiner: Defense, ball control can send Manning off in glory

February 06, 2016 by Art Spander in articles, football

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

It’s as if the game already has been played. As if the Carolina Panthers won the Super Bowl. When, in fact, the Denver Broncos will win it. Win it ugly, the way underdogs usually do. Win it by keeping the Panthers from winning it, with defense, with ball control, with the sort of breaks teams like Denver inevitably get in games like this, and thus are described as lucky rather than good.

But in football, luck is not so much bestowed as created.

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S.F. Examiner: Broncos forced to overcome tumultuous upbringings

February 05, 2016 by Art Spander in articles, football

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

A letter from the president. So few are sent. Katrina Smith had to be special, and in a way she was, holding the letter from President Barack Obama that commuted an excessively severe prison sentence which had taken her away from society, away from a son who was to become a football star while she had become an inmate.

Demaryius Thomas was a sixth grader, 11 years old, when Smith and her own mother, Minnie Thomas, were convicted and incarcerated 16 years ago for making and selling crack cocaine in Georgia.

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S.F. Examiner: Former Cal running back, Vallejo native keeps defying odds

February 04, 2016 by Art Spander in articles, football

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The distance Cortelle Javon Anderson traveled should not be measured in distance — practicing for Super Bowl 50, he is only 70 miles from his hometown of Vallejo — but in achievement. He’s done what few beyond Anderson or his mother believed was possible in the classroom or on the football field.

It’s a tough, industrial community, Vallejo, filled with the offspring of workers — many African-American, many from the South — who came to work in the Mare Island shipyards during World War II. The headlines from Vallejo these days too often are negative ones dealing with crime or unemployment.

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S.F. Examiner: Are Phillips, Broncos playing possum?

February 03, 2016 by Art Spander in articles, football

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The current Raiders coach, Jack Del Rio, was the Broncos previous defensive coach. The current Broncos defensive coach, Wade Phillips, was out of work but hardly out of ideas. Or out of superlatives about the current player who concerns him most, Carolina quarterback Cam Newton.

“He makes plays nobody else makes,” Phillips said.

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S.F. Examiner: Elway in line for historic player-executive perfecta

February 02, 2016 by Art Spander in articles, football

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

He was the coach’s kid, and there’s no better place to begin. But John Elway was his own man and is still his own man, using talent and lessons acquired if not necessarily taught. It wasn’t that Elway could throw a football so hard — when his receivers occasionally missed one of his passes, they often were left with a bruise, a mark that looked like the seams of the ball, or the “Elway Cross” — it’s that he knew when to throw or when not to throw.

The offspring of those in athletics have an advantage. Not only genetically but also perceptively. They grow up within the game, grasping the nuances. Look at Barry Bonds, who as a toddler was with his father, Bobby, in the Giants clubhouse, listening and watching. Never mind the steroid stuff. Barry understood how and where. He always threw to the right base. He always set up in the perfect position in the outfield.

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S.F. Examiner: Broncos’ cry: ‘Get it done for Pat’

February 01, 2016 by Art Spander in articles, football

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

It is disease that frustrates as well as debilitates. You lose contact with loved ones, friends. And they with you. The moments that would be shared, should be shared, the joy, the pain, can no longer be. “They can no longer communicate with you,” said Beth Bowlen Wallace about the victims of Alzheimer’s. “You feel like you’ve lost them.”

Her father, Pat Bowlen, is one of those victims. He also is the longtime owner of the Denver Broncos, who Sunday at Levi’s Stadium play the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50. Not that Bowlen is aware. The team that is his no longer is his.

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S.F. Examiner: Young living good life as Super Bowl host

January 30, 2016 by Art Spander in articles, football

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

He’s never been shy with an opinion, which is to be expected from a man who graduated from law school and, in a sense, graduated from quarterback school. Steve Young could play a good game, a great game at times — who can forget Super Bowl XXIX when he was MVP? — and still talks a wonderful game as an analyst.

Super Bowl 50 isn’t Young’s Super Bowl, to be exact, yet it is his Super Bowl. He’s involved with the Host Committee. He’s involved as an ESPN announcer. And perhaps emotionally he’s involved because the head coach of the Denver Broncos, Gary Kubiak, was Young’s quarterback coach with the 49ers that one magnificent season, 1994, when San Francisco rolled on to the NFL championship, and Steve exorcised any demons that we perceived even if he did not.

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S.F. Examiner: Peytongate places Manning under siege

January 29, 2016 by Art Spander in articles, football

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

A year ago it was Deflategate. This time it’s what, Peytongate? The NFL’s biggest stage, the Super Bowl. The NFL’s biggest nightmare, an intruding, negative story, a distraction, a question about a man who has been the sport’s ambassador, and until now without a hint of scandal.

It seems so perfect, Peyton Manning, 39, about to head through that one-way door toward retirement, receiving the chance of which every athlete dreams, to go out at the top. And yet, as the Broncos quarterback prepares for Super Bowl 50 next week at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, where he’ll be under siege by the Carolina Panthers, Manning also is facing an investigation by the NFL and U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

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S.F. Examiner: Super Bowl in Silicon, leaving The City with silicone

January 28, 2016 by Art Spander in articles, football

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

So it’s another Not-in-San-Francisco Super Bowl to be played in a city named for another saint, Santa Clara, which used to be full of orchards and now has a stadium where too many 49ers games are filled with regret.

It’s a beautiful place, of course, which is expected when something costs more than a billion dollars. And when it’s named for the denim trousers created by Levi Strauss out of miners’ tent fabric back when sourdough was a description of certain people, not the best-tasting bread anywhere.

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S.F. Examiner: Curry, Panthers converge in greatness

January 27, 2016 by Art Spander in articles, football

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The jersey is in a safe. “And I won’t tell you where the safe is,” said Stephen Curry, playing a figurative game of keep-away with the skill he plays the actual game of basketball. The jersey is that of the Carolina Panthers, Curry’s other team. At the moment, maybe his primary team.

“I’ve had it for a while,” said Curry. It’s the Panthers’ white jersey, with blue and black numbers and edging, the same as they wore Sunday in mauling the Arizona Cardinals, 49-14.

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S.F. Examiner: Kubiak cools down Denver hot seat

January 26, 2016 by Art Spander in articles, football

By Art Spander
Special to the Examiner

Two seasons ago, Gary Kubiak collapsed while walking off a field at halftime. He was hospitalized with “a mini-stroke” yet was so dedicated to his craft that he resumed coaching the Houston Texans shortly afterward, only to be fired weeks later.

So he could handle any challenge, including the one presented this season by his good friend in Denver, John Elway.

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