‘Best owner ever’
Edmonton’s Pat Bowlen succeeded spectacularly in Canada and the NFL
The man was the answer to one of my favourite sports trivia questions.
Q: Who is the only person to ever win back-to-back Little Grey Cup Canadian Junior Football Championships and NFL Super Bowls?
A: Pat Bowlen.
He did it as a member of the celebrated Edmonton Huskies team that won the title in 1962-63-64 and as owner of the 1997-98 Denver Broncos.
After several years suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Bowlen died late Thursday, just two months before his enshrinement in the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. He was 75.
He wasn’t a typical player on that three-in-a-row winning Edmonton Huskies team coached by 22-year-old Dennis Kadatz, who also died last week. And he certainly wasn’t a typical NFL owner.
Not that there was anything typical about the group of junior football players that featured longtime Eskimo Ron Forwick, Tony Rankel, Marv Roberts, Ian Macleod, Clarence Kachman, Warren Hansen, George Spanach, Bob Bateman, Larry Bird, Larry Dufresne and colourful and legendary trainer Monty ‘The Merc’ Ford. They had to be the smallest football team that ever won anything.
“I remember Pat Bowlen very well when he drove into the Huskies parking lot in his white Corvette with his blond hair blowing in the breeze,” Hansen, who later made his name in a World Curling Hall of Fame career as a builder, recalled Friday.
“Pat was with us in the summers of 1962 and 1963, but both years he returned to U.S. college in the fall. He was proud of his time with the Huskies as he always claimed his affiliation with the team.”
Bowlen, brought back at the keynote speaker at a Huskies dinner, joked that he “played without distinction” with the Huskies, a line he also used about being a member of the University of Oklahoma Sooners in college.
Business partner Peter Batoni once referred to Bowlen, in a piece written by Ray Turchansky in the Edmonton Journal as “the biggest bench-warmer in the history of Oklahoma.”
Batoni-Bowlen Enterprises built the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton.
Bowlen accepted the invitation to speak at the special Huskies 50th anniversary dinner because it was to raise money for a new clubhouse.
“I couldn’t imagine that they spent all those years in that old clubhouse. We had trouble getting hot water back in the ‘60s.
“I look back on it as a very enjoyable time in my youth,” he told me at the time. “That was a really fun group of guys to be around.”
Bowlen’s right-hand man for his entire run in Denver was Edmonton’s Fred Fleming, who put the night together.
“Pat figured he should donate $5,000 to the fund for a new clubhouse,” remembered Fleming. “I suggested he auction off four executive box seats instead. They had two bid at $16,500. So he decided they both were winners and doubled the deal and raised $33,000.”
Bowlen also owned Regent Drilling, where he made the acquaintance of former Edmonton Eskimos and Calgary Stampeder player and CTV colour commentator Fleming, a truck driver with the firm.
He took Fleming to Denver as his special assistant for a life that Fleming joked, working more than 150 luncheons and dinners representing the owner and the Broncos, he came to view himself as Freddie the Freeloader.
It’s difficult to believe today but Bowlen bought 60 per cent of the Broncos for $42 million US at age 40 in 1984 with his brothers John and Bill and sister Marybeth and sister buying the rest of it.
Two years earlier he almost bought the Montreal Alouettes.
“Pat was originally looking at the Als, but he didn’t feel the French Canadian fans wanted an English-speaking Canadians owning the team so Pat started looking at buying an NFL team instead,” said Fleming.
In 2017, Forbes Magazine put a value of $2.4 billion on the franchise.
I remember interviewing Bowlen in his Edmonton office, on the same block as the Edmonton Journal building and being somewhat surprised by his idea that he was going to be a hands-on owner, spending a lot of time not only in Denver but in the Broncos offices.
Who is this descendent of Alberta pioneers including Alberta’s lieutenant-governor 1948-58 John L. Bowlen, that thinks he’s qualified to run an NFL team?
Quote-unquote: “I always wanted to be owner of an
NFL team. Buying the Broncos was a career decision. It’s not a hobby.
I plan to run the business. This is something I want to do for a living.”
He succeeded spectacularly. A regular competitor in the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii, Bowlen was all in with the Broncos from the beginning.
Bowlen had his team in six Super Bowls, but unfortunately, for the most recent he was unable to remember details of the back-to-back titles in 1997 and 1998.
The only owner to win more than 300 games in 30 seasons of being the hands-on owner, the Broncos only missed the playoffs in five of those seasons.
“Pat was considered to be the best owner ever,” said Fleming.