INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE Updated: July 24, 2025   For 21 summers, the Broncos bonded in Greeley -- both on and off the field    During one of the Broncos' early training camps at the University of Northern Colorado, a young John Elway lanches a pass with one of his predecessors, Craig Morton, watching as a consultant and special assignent assistant coach.       The State Armory Event Center in Greeley, several years after its infamous run as a social center during Broncos' training camps.     The Broncos opened their 2025 training camp Wednesday at the team's Dove Valley facility in Centennial. The routine long ago became familiar, with the team entrenched year-round at the complex, which is undergoing massive renovations and expansion. At least for many of us, this seems hard to believe now: It has been 23 years since the Broncos made training camp a road show. Before that, for 21 consecutive summers (from 1982 through 2002), the team for as long as six weeks took up annual temporary residence at Greeley and the University of Northern Colorado.  The Broncos were far from alone in those years, with many or even most NFL teams shipping off their camps to college campuses and facilities. Eventually, that fell out of fashion. Why not take full advantage of teams' increasingly impressive complexes, especially as virtually year-round work (including Organized Team Activities, minicamps, and more) became the norm?      A few years ago, I explored and revisited those Greeley training camp times. They were about more than football. They were about an entire football operation -- and, yes, many of the shadowing members of the Denver-area media -- heading up US Highway 85 and moving into UNC's high-rise Lawrenson Hall. Many Greeley residents attended practices and also encountered Broncos players and staff around town.        When the Broncos annually held training camp at UNC, the State Armory on 8th Avenue was a restaurant and bar known for burgers, beer, pool tables, pinball, shuffleboard and music – and as an escape refuge for the Denver players. Many years later, the building was sold, rechristened the State Armory Event Center and reconfigured as a site for offices, plus weddings, church services and other functions. As years passed, the Broncos still were part of the building’s legacy.  Their Broncos' other Greeley favorite during the training-camp years was the Smiling Moose, on 11th Avenue. It shut down in late 2002, shortly after what turned out to be the Broncos' final training camp in Greeley.The property since has been through several closures and incarnations.   If the walls in both buildings could talk, they’d have great stories. When I visited the renamed State Armory Event Center years after the Broncos' exit from Greeley, Justin Kleinsorge, the husband of building director Lindsey Kleinsorge, vounteered to be my tour guide. He knew where to go first. He immediately took me to a corner on the second floor. “John Elway would have sat right here,” Kleinsorge told me. “This was the raised booth area, and he would have sat in this corner right here. That’s the legend.”   My official, if anonymous, press credential for John Elway's first training camp. It's interesting that UNC -- and not the Broncos -- offivially the pass, though it was signed by affable Broncos official Charlie Lee, who had moved from Dan Reeves' coachinig staff to PR.    The most memorable Broncos training camp in Greeley was the second one, in 1983. Elway’s rookie-year camp at UNC ran through preparation for the third exhibition game. Amid an escalating Denver newspaper war, there was no such thing as excessive Elway coverage. Elway’s every move was chronicled in print, including in a daily “Elway Watch.” When he went to get a haircut, he was shadowed. I was an NBA writer at the time, covering the Nuggets, but was brought into the mix, too, and my most vivid memory is of getting a call in Lawrenson Hall from an editor, pointing out that neither I nor my sports staff compatriot on Broncos duty that day had filed the Elway watch. I explained that since we were far into training camp and nothing significant had happened beyond what we mentioned in our stories, we could skip the Elway Watch for the day. We nicely were told that wouldn’t do, and we each filed a couple of tongue-in-cheek items to be pieced together, and I thought it was fairly obvious we were gently poking fun at the saturation coverage concept. It ran as we sent it.     UNC's Lawrenson Hall was the Broncos' Greeley headquarters for 21 summers.   During the Broncos’ stay in Greeley, they made it to the Super Bowl five times and won twice, beating Green Bay 31-24 in Super Bowl XXXII and Atlanta 34-19 in Super Bowl XXXIII. Few players wax nostalgic about training camp. It is not a popular phenomenon, and that was even more the case in the era of more hitting, longer practices, and conditions that more replicated games. At camps now, you can walk away thinking you just saw an intramural flag football game. Ring of Fame linebacker Karl Mecklenburg was with the Broncos from 1983-94 and never went to training camp anywhere other than Greeley. He was a 12th-round draft choice in 1983, the same draft when Elway went to the Colts at No. 1 overall and Gary Kubiak went to the Broncos in the eighth round.   “I think there’s an advantage to getting away with your teammates and kind of isolating yourself and spending some time together,” Mecklenburg told me. “That’s one thing that’s missed from not going to Greeley.” He laughed and added, “I still get the willies when I drive by Greeley. It wasn’t fun, but it was good for the team, I believe.” Did he go to the Smiling Moose and the State Armory? “Uh, I’ve been there,” he said. His more serious point was that Greeley – and the other out-of-town sites of longer and more rigorous NFL training camps in different eras – was part of a system more conducive to discovering unheralded talent and getting players ready for the physical trials of the upcoming season. “It was 110 guys coming to camp and five weeks later, after knockdown-dragouts, blisters, sun, the coaches, just the whole thing, it was as physically, emotionally demanding as anything I’ve ever done,” Mecklenburg said. “For a while there, I was doing one-a-days when everyone else was doing two-a-days because the doctor told (Coach) Dan (Reeves) I had only so many steps left in my knee. But still, it was a challenge. “They don’t hit the way they used to hit, and I think that shows in what you see in tackling and contact the first few weeks of the season. And truthfully, I don’t know if I would have made the team under these conditions. I was the 310th pick in the draft because I don’t look good in shorts.” Mark Jackson, one of Elway’s “Three Amigo” wide receivers, went to Greeley training camps from 1986-92. “Probably the most powerful thing about the Greeley experience was the fact that you were totally immersed,” Jackson told me. “You’re football 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There always are going to be distractions if you let them come into your life, but there are no easy distractions. For the guys who have kids, it might be your kid falling down and scratching his leg. There are a lot of things that can take your mind off football. “When you’re in Greeley, though, it’s football. If you’re a rookie, it’s, ‘How do I make this team?’ If you’re a veteran, it’s, ‘How do I keep my job and how do I get better?’ To be on the campus at Lawrenson Hall with all the security checks, I think it lent itself for you to treat football as a profession. As a rookie, it went from a game you played to a profession.” Jackson roomed at Lawrenson with fellow “Amigo” Vance Johnson for six of his seven camps. “Some people think that everyone you play football with are your best friends,” Jackson said. “That’s just not true, but the bonding part that comes out of it, you get to learn a personality and you get to know and trust that person.”     The Smiling Moose was only a block from the UNC campus. Players, team officials and members of the media managed to make the walk on a regular basis.        Knowing the likely answer, I also asked Jackson if he had been to the hangouts as a player. “No,” Jackson said. “You know something? I never set foot in …” He cut himself off. “I’m lying,” he said, then laughed. “Yeah, that was the other part of the bonding. Eat together, sleep together, shower together and then drink together. I forgot about that one. That’s when you really learn a personality, right?” The staff bonded at camp, too. During the Broncos’ run in Greeley, Jack Elway, John’s father; and Jerry Frei, my father, worked for the team in roles that evolved through the years. Both had been college head coaches, Jack at Stanford, Jerry at Oregon. Jack primarily was director of pro scouting and Jerry at various times was offensive line coach, scout and director of college scouting. By 2000, they both were considered emeritus consultants, after many years sharing an office at Dove Valley and sitting together in press boxes at Broncos games at home and on the road.     Jack Elway and Jerry Frei in the Broncos' winning locker room after the Super Bowl XXXIII victory over the Falsons.    At the Broncos’ offices, they were “Jack & Jerry,” the ampersand-linked veteran voices with respected personnel judgment instincts. In Greeley, they also shared a golf cart for the practices and navigation on campus, and also a corner suite in Lawrenson that was the nightly Happy Hour (and later) spot for Broncos coaches and staff. Jerry, the only man on the planet to earn the World War II Air Medal (three times) and a Super Bowl championship ring (twice), died of congestive heart failure on Feb. 16, 2001. At his memorial service, many Broncos officials, including coach Mike Shanahan and owner Pat Bowlen, spoke, most bringing up Jack & Jerry. Then Jack himself got up. Jack spoke of the Happy Hour sessions in Greeley, saying each morning at camp in the Lawrenson suite, he would ask Jerry, “How many people do I have to apologize to?” Jack added, “And he always had a list for me.” Jack suffered a fatal heart attack two months later. At Jack’s memorial service, Pat Bowlen proposed a toast to Jack & Jerry. It was as if they all were back in Greeley.