Going to the Super Bowl, this very first time, turned out to be much more exciting for Colorado and its beloved Broncos than playing in it.

After 18 years - first as an American Football League stepchild then a National Football League afterthought - the Broncos finally made Denver and Colorado feel like they were big time.

The Rocky made it a tradition, unspoken and unplanned, to feature the Broncos on Page One on most Mondays after games. Unless war or pestilence broke out. On Jan. 2, 1978, the football team really was a front- page story. The Broncos had beaten The Hated Raiders and were going to play America's team, the Dallas Cowboys, in Denver's first championship game.

"SUPER NEW YEAR!"

the Page One story began.

"Ring out the old - the Oakland Raiders - and ring in the new - the Denver Broncos.

"Denver's Destiny Darlings are headed to the Super Bowl.

"On New Year's Day, before 75,000 Broncomaniacs, the Broncos turned a chilly afternoon into the warmest day in Denver history by winning the National Football League's American Conference championship over the Raiders 20-17.

" . . . There was dancing in the streets Sunday after the Broncos provided Denver with its most exciting sports moment ever."

Even the cliche-filled sports writing was acceptable on this day. Broncomania truly had been born.

Inside, there was only one story in the local news section - a reaction story that ran with a photo of Mercy Medical Center nurses who had dyed two newborn babies' blankets orange and printed "Go Broncos" in blue on each. The sports section provided five pages of coverage - puny today for even preseason games.

The next day, there were no Broncos stories in local news. Broncos fans learned that the team had been allotted 10,000 tickets for the Super Bowl back in the sports section.

By Wednesday, Jan. 4, the newspaper got it. Over a Page One photo of a fan camped first in line overnight outside Super Bowl ticket windows, the banner headline read:

Bronco holiday declared

"In a move that provoked a storm of public criticism, more than 65,000 state and city employees have been given a paid holiday on Friday - compliments of Gov. Dick Lamm - to celebrate the success of the Super Bowl-bound Denver Broncos."

A crowd estimated at 100,000 lined downtown streets to send off the team to New Orleans for the game. The orange-clad fans may not have even noticed the day's bummer banner story:

Market hits two-year low

The Broncos lost to Dallas 27-10. The paper gave the game nine pages of coverage, including Page One.

It certainly would have consoled Colorado to know that it would have five more trips to the Super Bowl in future years to get it right.

The passing of giants

The Rocky gave Page One treatment to the deaths of two much-respected men in the week before the Super Bowl - Sen. Hubert Humphrey, a former vice president, and Jack Foster, the scrappy editor who rescued the newspaper in the 1940s and led it into its tabloid golden years.

One photo of Foster showed the fedora- topped editor sitting on the roof of the Rocky's old offices on West Colfax Avenue, with the Zook Building over his shoulder. In 2007 the Zook was converted into million-dollar lofts, but in 1952 it had a three-story-tall whiskey bottle as an advertisement perched on its roof. Foster successfully campaigned to have the bottle removed because, he said, it cheapened the view of the mountains from his office. Life magazine took the photo.

Michael Madigan 150@RockyMountainNews.com