Sad sacks: The national sports media descended on Denver last weekend for the opening of Broncos training camp, and they mostly spend their time fawning over Peyton Manning — a little different feeling than last year's Tim Tebow mania — which was expected. Even better? no one on the team managed to get arrested while the reporters were here.
Were we just lucky? Probably, after all, in the wake of Elvis Dumervil's mid-July bust in Miami, the Broncos became third in the NFL since 2000 (behind only Minnesota and Cincinnati) in an extremely dubious category: most arrests. The Denver Post recently pointed this out using an amazing database created by the San Diego Union-Tribune, which counts 34 booked Broncos in the past twelve years (you can see photos and info about all of them on the Latest Word blog at westword.com).
Of course, some players past and present did more than their share to contribute to the total, by getting arrested multiple times. And while plenty of them will be familiar only to Broncos fans with the longest memories, others are hardly obscure — including the iconic player who kicked off the list in January 2000.
Equally interesting are the number of cases that were eventually dropped — developments sure to raise questions about the interaction of fame, money, access to high-rent legal resources and justice.
The specifics about each incident come courtesy of the Union-Tribune's database, which is a fascinating resource and well worth visiting for those intrigued by the dark side of America's real national pastime.
