Note: This is one of those tales that include a living witness who can verify that this is, indeed, a true story.
SPORTS TEAMS THAT HAVE 40+ home games a season often throw in a specialty night to spice things up. Military Night is an example: presentations at pregame and halftime honor those who have served in the military; we run lots of American flag graphics on the scoreboards. 80s Night is another one: everyone dresses in 1980s clothes, and we play 80s music all night; the animated 80s Night scoreboard graphics I’ve made include a DeLorean, Rubik’s Cubes and Patrick Nagel prints floating over a mosaic of fluorescent-colored spirals and simple shapes.
Many people I know know an opportunity to get a buzz when they see it, but it takes advanced skill and experience to recognize a drinking opportunity at work. The Denver Nuggets Hispanic Heritage Night is practically a red carpet to Buzzville.
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It must have been 2002 or 2003 when I first had the idea to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Night by cruising down to the concourse shortly after the game began and buying a round of margaritas for the four of us in the upper control room, manning the lights, sound, and non-video scoreboards in the arena. If confronted while carrying the drinks, my response would be that we’re simply celebrating Hispanic Heritage Night—and I’d say it with an inflection as though to ask, and what are YOU doing to celebrate with our Hispanic friends, huh?
It was a challenge to carry all of those margaritas through the crowd, into the elevator, up to the sixth-floor, past security, and back to the control room without spilling anything. The other challenge was to do it all without getting fired. A few years into my little tradition, I sought to solve both problems.
Kirk Godfrey was a coworker of mine, a production manager for Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, the company that owns the Colorado Avalanche, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Mammoth, Colorado Rapids, and the arena and stadium where the teams play. A production manager solves any problem that occurs during an event. This goes for all of the sports teams that host games there in the NHL, NBA, and NLL, as well as concerts, flying motorcycle shows, high school wrestling tournaments—anything. Whether it’s providing a special chair backstage for a superstar performing at the arena or arranging a way to send power to a covered festival stage in the parking lot, Kirk knows who to call and what to do to solve your issue. There were three production managers at KSE who rotated through events, each taking a sport and handling concerts on a rotating schedule so everyone could still get some sleep with over 300 shows in the building each year.
Who could help me carry the margaritas tonight? I couldn’t really ask anyone else in the control room since I was already leaving the room short one operator while on my quest for margaritas, and I didn’t really want to expose anyone else there to the prospect of getting busted for my little escapade of drinking on the job.
Just before the National Anthem began, I looked to my left, past Dusty Powell, the L1 (Lighting Lead), and saw Kirk standing in the upper press area next-door to the control room. Our control room is open to the arena bowl and to the press area. Sometimes I’d hop over the three-foot wall that separated us from the press area if there was no one around and I needed to use their copier.
“Hey, Kirk.” I got his attention. Through standing in the next room, he was physically only fifteen feet away.
He smiled when he saw me and raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”
“When the anthem is over, could you come around to the control room? I’ve got something I need help with.”
(You’ve got to lure them into your web of delinquency gradually.)
Kirk nodded and gave me a thumbs up. A note about Kirk: He’s one of the nicest, most pleasant and competent people you will ever meet. I’ve never seen him rattled or angry. In the live sports entertainment industry, panic is a sign of unprofessionalism. The louder people yell when things are going south, the more amateurish the crew. Kirk is a calm, easy-going guy, and that doesn’t change no matter how many things may be crashing down. We were friends as well as coworkers.
After the anthem, Kirk took the long way around and walked into our control room through the door, as designed.
“What’s up, JD?”
Dusty was on a regular rotation as the L1 that night. The Lighting Lead not only runs the colorful, rotating event lighting in the arena from a programmable lighting control panel but also directs the four spotlight operators out in the arena over headsets. Sitting next to me for several seasons, he had watched me enough to know how to click the basic buttons in the Daktronics scoreboard software to trigger messages and animations to the scoreboards, often brief cheers after a good bucket, but mostly the contracted ads that run during timeouts and promotions.
“Dusty, can you handle the Dak for me while we head to the concourse?”
I turned back to Kirk and continued, “Could you help me carry some stuff? It’s down on the lower concourse.”
Dusty was smiling knowingly. When I arrived at work that day and walked into the control room, he was the first one to mention it. So it’s Hispanic Heritage Night. I presume that means you’re taking a trip to the concourse once the game starts?
Kirk and Dusty answered in unison with twin versions of No problem, before Kirk and I exited the control room and headed for the elevators.
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My selection of Kirk was strategic. He wasn’t just there to help me carry the shit. Anyone with arms could to do that. No, he was a production manager. His position in the company was a level higher than me, though not directly above me in the Kroenke corporate hierarchy. The point is, caught carrying booze through security and into the control room, they might fire me, a lowly scoreboard operator, but they wouldn’t fire a production manager.
And if they can’t fire him, they can’t fire me if I’m doing the exact same thing. Additionally, any people lateral to me on the corporate level won’t bother me if I’m with a production manager. It levels me up. Or better yet, it looks like I’m helping him, whatever serious business it is that we’re up to.
I hit the button for the first floor, and while we ride down, I fully explain the mission parameters to my friend. He was chuckling as we approached the first floor. Just to put a fine point on it, I stated flatly at the end, “Besides, it’s a great excuse to get a buzz while we’re working a Nuggets game.”
My punchline was delivered a perfect split-second before the elevator doors slid open and Kirk laughed out loud as we stepped out.
He kindly turned down my offer to add a drink order for him but agreed to help me carry the booty of booze to the control room.
“Four large margaritas, please,” I said to the nice server behind the 21-and-over booze stand.
She didn’t know I was actually her coworker because once we got onto the concourse, I put my laminated KSE working credentials in my back pocket to conceal that fact from everyone. Blend in. Anonymous. I thought about asking if I get an employee discount by showing her my KSE credentials, but winning streaks don’t last forever and it’s best not to push it. Keep the employee thing on the QT until we return to the safety of the control room.
After I paid and tipped, however, I had to retrieve my credentials anyway and clip them to the front of my belt. I work in multiple sports facilities and have three different laminated credentials hanging from the same clip that I attach to my jacket or pants, rotating or flipping over the stack so I can enter the building I’m working at that day. Once we reach the elevators, the only way the guard lets you pass is if you’ve got a ticket or are displaying a KSE working credential. I wouldn’t be able to clip it on once I had a margarita in each hand. Each margarita was about the size of a large Slurpee you see at 7-Eleven, and each had a big red straw sticking out of it.
My ruse worked! As we made our way along the concourse, we saw a fellow employee we both knew from the Colorado Avalanche wing of KSE walking in the opposite direction. He was there with a friend watching the Nuggets game with comp tickets, a perk for being an employee at the time. He and his friend were already pretty drunk.
“Kirk!” he shouts across the crowd while waving to us. “What’s up?”
Kirk smiles as we continue to the elevators without slowing down.
“Just working another awesome Nuggets game, you know,” Kirk replies.
And I don’t think he was even being completely sarcastic.
“What’s with the drinks?”
Smiling, Kirk had just enough time to reply, “Just making a delivery,” before our Avs buddy disappeared into the crowd and there was no time left for details. Kirk and I walked through the wide-open glass doors, past security, to the elevators.
I’m a fucking genius. He said, “Kirk.” Didn’t even mention my name, I thought as the elevator doors closed and we squeezed in behind two other people. It was my stupid idea, and it was like I wasn’t even there.
You know that feeling when a plan comes together way better than you predicted? I imagine it’s the same feeling a player on the court gets when he hits a game-winning buzzer-beater from halfcourt.
I’m a fucking genius.
The elevator opens on the second-floor suite level, and the other two people get out. Kirk and I are the only two in the elevator now, and I am already imagining how I’ll keep the margarita on the floor, out of sight, and covertly suck it down with the straw while running the scoreboards, like I do every year. How fucking hard is it to click the [Three Pnts] button when a Nuggets player hits a three? Not. I can do it buzzed; hell, I could do it drunk.
Those are my thoughts when the elevator stops on the third level and the doors open again.
There is one person waiting for the elevator. He is tall, sporting a prominent, dark, perfectly groomed moustache, and he is wearing his customary pin-striped suit.
His name is Stan Kroenke.
Crap. I thought I thought of everything.
I had thought of the possibility of bumping into a director or maybe the long-shot of a Chief Officer-level person in the company while on our mission for booze. But I honestly had not calculated the possibility of running into the “K” of KSE. The billionaire who hires and fires the CEOs.
And here we are, Kirk and I, just standing there holding four large margaritas with our KSE working credentials clipped to our pants.
The owner of the team, and the building, steps into the elevator. I smile, and act like everything is perfectly normal.
“Hello,” was all that came out of me as Mr. Kroenke joined us.
He nodded, smiled, and said, “How you fellas doing?” as he turned to face the closing doors.
“Good!”
“Great!”
It’s not easy to maintain a smile when you’re holding a 32 oz. container of booze in each hand and your heart rate has jumped to 120 bpm. In the elevator, we couldn’t even set them down.
Five agonizing hours later, the doors opened on the fourth-floor administrative level and Mr. Kroenke stepped off the elevator, leaving Kirk and me alone again. The only sound I could hear was Stan’s boots walking away from the elevator across the polished executive-level floors, followed by the muted rumble of the elevator doors closing, and then silence. We went up again.
“Uhhh…” was all I said at first as I looked at Kirk.
“Yup. That was Mr. Kroenke right there,” Kirk said, again chuckling at the situation. (I’m telling ya, he’s never rattled.)
As we delivered the margaritas to our compatriots in the upper control room, of course we played the game, Guess who we bumped into on the elevator while carrying these?
“Holy shit,” was the general response. “And he didn’t say anything?”
“Just asked how we were doing. I think he saw the credentials but just didn’t care,” I offered. “I don’t know for sure.”
By the time the night was over, the Nuggets had won the game, a few of us had a nice little buzz going, and I still had my job.
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Today, Kirk Godfrey is the Facilities Operations Manager for the Denver Broncos at Empower Field at Mile High and leads a team of eight who manage hundreds of people. Together, they solve problems at Broncos home games and keep the stadium running smoothly through all concerts and events at the stadium year-round.
Scoreboard Operator is not a bad gig.
THE END_