Broncos start to cash in on new home-field advantage

~ Denver was 8-0 this year at Invesco Field, which isn't as formidable to opponents as Mile High Stadium was.

DENVER -- The last time the Denver Broncos hosted a playoff game, the stadium shook. Literally.

Time, progress and the inevitable financial realities of the NFL forced the Broncos to bulldoze their creaky, lovable old home, Mile High Stadium, along with the significant home-field advantage that went with it.

In its place is the new Invesco Field, which until this season has not given the Broncos the same kind of edge they enjoyed when Mile High was standing.

"It's taken longer than I thought it would," said owner Pat Bowlen, roundly lambasted when he made the decision to turn Mile High into a parking lot. "I guess I was daydreaming when I thought we'd just move from Mile High to Invesco and it would all be the same."

Bowlen concedes it hasn't been, although with the Broncos going 8-0 at Invesco for the first time this season and getting ready to host their first playoff game at the new stadium -- Saturday night against New England -- there's reason to believe things are changing.

"It's like moving into a new neighborhood," Bowlen said. "It takes you a while to get comfortable. But I think fans are getting used to it."

Comfort. It's the reason owners are willing to pay millions of dollars out of their own pockets and hold cities hostage for new stadiums.

Invesco, built for $400 million with the help of Denver taxpayers, has 132 comfortable luxury suites, which greatly increase the amount of revenue Bowlen can bring in. Meanwhile, seats in the general sections are wider, bathrooms and concession stands are more abundant and the whole experience of going to a game is more -- well -- comfortable.

Of course, cushy surroundings don't always translate into loud, raucous crowds -- a reality that a miffed John Elway pointed out last season, while the Broncos were on their way to their fourth straight season of two or more losses at their new home.

"That place ain't loud anymore," Elway told the Denver Post. "It might be too comfortable."

At Mile High, comfortable was never an issue. Cold, steel bleachers with flimsy, plastic backrests were the rule.

Opposing teams hated going toward the "South Stands," a stand-alone section above the locker room from which snowballs and insults were routinely hurled at visitors.

The other end was no bargain, either. That was the enclosed end of the stadium, which is where the noise really collected.

Meanwhile, the entire east side of the stadium was set on runways covered by 0.003 inches of water, part of a hydraulic system that allowed the stands to be moved back and forth to configure the stadium for baseball in the summer and football in the fall.

The setup produced what was called Rocky Mountain Thunder, the result of thousands of fans stomping on the steel bleachers, causing them to actually shake and sway. It was in part because of Broncos fans that the NFL put in a rule allowing road teams to essentially ignore the play clock when crowd noise made it impossible for their offenses to hear at the line.

"I always wondered if it was going to fall down," Bowlen said of the old stadium. "I could feel it in my box. It felt like the stadium was moving about six inches either way. You could just feel it swaying."

It's hard to reproduce what was essentially a design flaw, but the Broncos tried. They built the stands on metal risers to reproduce some of the noise. But because they were set in concrete, not on the hydraulics, there was no way the stadium could shake the same way.

"The reverb noise is nowhere near as loud as it was at Mile High, but the fans are catching on," Bowlen said.