About Us
It’s All Over, Fat Man! is a blog about the Denver Broncos featuring writing by TJ Johnson, Emmett Smith, Ted Bartlett, and Douglas Lee.
TJ never met a Raiders fan he liked. As a child, watching Broncos games on television, he used to whisper to the monitor, "John Elway is five standard deviations above the mean." Since then, he's always taken a statistical view of the NFL. "Stats can lie," he's fond of saying, "but at least they don't lie as bad as Chargers fans." Raised by wolves on the high plains north of Denver, you can still hear him howling at spreadsheets in the middle of the night. He has watched the Big Lebowski over 100 times in English. At that point he became a little bored, so he watched it 100 times in Spanish. He has two dogs, two cats and two sons, but his wife isn't about to let him get into the market for a second "special ladyfriend.
Em became addicted to football as a small child, when his father and older brother took him to Wrigley Field for Bears games featuring Gale Sayers, Dick Butkus, and the Hawk Wind off of Lake Michigan, which could freeze your hot chocolate solid between the cup and your lip. The Bears were never huge winners, but the heart and effort of players like Brian Piccolo, Butkus, and Sayers won over his respect and affection. But time moved on, and so did he, settling first on the Continental Divide and later in Lakewood, just outside of Denver, on the Bear Creek Greenbelt. In those days, the Bears weren't always on TV, but the Broncos were, and he watched in stunned amazement as the Broncos’ QB threw pass after 4th-quarter pass, forcing his team onward to victory. Convinced that this was true greatness, Doc Bear, as he was by then known, settled in to enjoy the brilliant efforts that fell short, those that pushed the game over the edge onto Denver's side of the scoreboard, and those that were just impossible for the opposing teams to stop. It only took a short time for full-fledged addiction to set in - yet another Broncos fan had been created.
Doug is IAOFM's resident newsman and grammar police editor. As a nine-year-old Islanders and Mets fan, he flipped on the tube and found a football game featuring a team wearing blue helmets and orange jerseys (same colors as his other teams). Turned out to be the Drive, as Elway took the boys 98 yards to pay dirt, and the rest isn’t really all that interesting. Doug spent countless hours thinking about how to get NFL Sunday Ticket in NYC before finally achieving that lofty dream last year. Despite having been a face painter, Doug is actually married and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
Doug has seniority over Ted by two weeks, as Ted became a Broncos fan during Super Bowl XXI. It was an act of defiance against his father, who incessantly told Ted and his brother Chris to shut up so he could cheer on the Giants. The old man later became a Packers fan, and then a Browns fan (he adopts new teams when he moves), and is still irritated that his two eldest sons have stuck with the Broncos all these years, despite never living anywhere near Colorado. Directly following Super Bowl XXXII, he wouldn't take Ted's call, and that was a very satisfying moment in a young man's life. If he seems to go missing for stretches, chances are he's playing golf with his fraternity brothers, and other random degenerates. Ted smirks a lot, whether anybody can see it or not, and proudly overuses parentheses and commas. He's also known to make many obscure pop culture references, while often announcing new rules and naming conventions as he goes, as if he's Bill Maher or something. If you disagree with him, it is most likely because you're wrong.
Doug, Ted, TJ, and Doc all met as staff writers at Mile High Report, SB Nation’s Broncos site.
About The Name
The Denver Broncos first began play in 1960 as one of the eight original members of the American Football League. While their AFL West rival Raiders, Chargers and Texans (later the Chiefs) all found early success, the Broncos did not achieve their first winning season until 1973. In 1977 the Broncos finally became nationally relevant, and headed to Oakland on October 16th for a battle of 4-0 teams, and in search of respect. But history was not on their side, as the Broncos had only managed to win two of the prior twenty-eight meetings between the teams. Oakland was the bully of the West, and their whipping boy of preference was Denver.
Although the Raiders jumped out to an early 7-0 lead, the teams entered halftime with Denver up 21-7 after a stunning fake field-goal attempt culminated in a touchdown pass to placekicker Jim Turner. As the clock wound down on Denver’s emphatic 30-7 victory, Broncos Ring of Fame linebacker Tom Jackson (now of The Worldwide Leader) approached the Oakland bench. The Broncos’ vocal defensive leader gestured to rotund Raiders coach John Madden and yelled, “It’s all over, Fat Man! It’s all over!” Denver and its Orange Crush Defense had a defining moment, and that defense would then carry the Broncos to their first playoff appearance and Super Bowl.