Denver, CO
Broncos fan finds massive YouTube show success with a mix of the profane, the inane and unabashed homerism
Brandon Perna might be the only Broncos fan grateful for the Russell Wilson era of Denver football.
Not for the quality of play — the Broncos notched 11 wins to 19 losses with Wilson as starting quarterback — or even because Wilson’s departure set the stage for a 2024 playoff berth and a 9-2 record this season, so far, for Perna’s hometown team.
No, Wilson in the orange and blue made Perna miserable. And man, was that good for clicks.
That misery helped Perna, 41, turn his own fandom into a flourishing YouTube channel. It’s one that’s lowbrow but thoughtful, and that takes fans seriously but treats sports fandom as what it’s supposed to be — fun.
“I don’t care if they’re … taking a 20-minute bathroom break at work to watch power rankings — like, (heck) yeah,” Perna said, reflecting on his audience in a recent interview in his home studio in Aurora. “Or they’re putting it on before they go to bed. Whatever it is, it makes me excited to do the next one. And hopefully I didn’t betray anybody by saying ‘Your team sucks’ the week before.”
Profane, inane and unapologetically pro-Broncos — “Go (expletive) yourselves, Kansas City” might be his “quoth the Raven” refrain — Perna has been running the “That’s Good Sports” show on YouTube for more than a decade. In that time, he’s grown regular viewership to reach the hundreds of thousands, and recently he crested 820,000 subscribers for the four or more videos he posts every week.
His self-described “bad football news presented in the form of even worse comedy” has grown into T-shirts, coffee custom-crafted for fans frustrated with awful penalties and an online community that spans the globe. His weekly “curse wheel,” which randomly targets teams for misfortune, had posted a playoff-level 9-2 record of successful curses through mid-November.
He’s navigated shifting YouTube algorithms, capricious sports gods and a saturated online market to turn his channel into a thriving operation.
It has grown from a one-man show to include co-writer Will Keys and editors Johnny Barker and Connor Sherrill, folks Perna credits with keeping the commentary sharp and production regular. He shouts out to other sports YouTubers like Tom Grossi and traditional sportscasters like Vic Lombardi for helping him find his footing.
Having the team in place ahead of the Wilson season had the channel ready to capitalize on the sudden influx of viewers. But getting to that point took years of toiling, as well as treating the burgeoning channel as a job — even when it didn’t have the paycheck associated with it.
‘Bigger and bigger goals’
Perna started working in the YouTube world as a video editor in the late 2000s, and he started running his channel casually in the early 2010s. He had left the increasingly corporate world of big-time YouTube production to focus on freelancing.
A quick, janky video, as he put it, changed things.
Peyton Manning, then the Broncos’ quarterback, threw seven touchdowns against the Baltimore Ravens in 2013 — a feat that hadn’t been accomplished in more than 40 years at that point. And that video’s success showed him there was an audience for his brand of irreverent analysis.
Over the following years, Perna was able to dedicate more time to the channel and lean on his wife, Jess Filipas, as the primary breadwinner. Some months and years tested his conviction — whether it was a bad Broncos season, the channel not hitting the way he knew it could, or personal travails, she said.
But his convictions — his authenticity about the views he brought — never wavered, Filipas said.
The relentless publishing schedule started to pay literal dividends in the late 2010s, to the point that Filipas was able to step back from her full-time job. Then they welcomed a newborn girl to the world in 2020.
The channel weathered the pandemic, as more folks chose to spend time indoors, leading to more sponsorships and contractual obligations. More production led to deeper connections with the audience — and between the cross-country team behind each episode.
“Things have gotten more complicated, but he’s had bigger and bigger goals,” Filipas said of her husband. “But he’s always known there’s more out there than him in the basement doing these videos alone.”
Keys, a lifelong Broncos fan who’s based in Sacramento, looped in with Perna in 2018. He started as a fan of the channel and clicked with Perna as a co-writer. The two cover each other’s blind spots and have similar enough senses of humor that they can fine-tune the antics that draw in viewers, Keys said.
Perna can read a phone book into his camera and get laughs, Keys said, and the visual humor of editors Barker and Sherrill completes the package.
They strive to show respect for the audience and to have breadth of coverage, Keys and Perna said. They don’t ignore games and don’t hate on teams or players. Even the epithets for the Kansas City Chiefs are built on divisional rivalry and that team’s long track record of success, not sneering dismissiveness.
In addition to news and game-driven publishing, Perna’s team also produces deep-dive pieces to help explain how the NFL arrived where it is today, whether that’s meant looking at past dynasties or broadcasting deep analysis of draft classes.
“People come back because I think they learn something,” Keys said “… We try to put a lot of thought into getting a good script, coming back to it multiple times, adding nuggets of information that no one else has.”
Perna will spend 75 hours a week working in the basement, writing and producing videos, Filipas said.
But he also pops up to play with their daughter — moments the whole family treasures, even if Filipas jokes about scheduling weekend outings so they’re not “listening to this madman scream about football” through the vents of their home during his Broncos livestreams.
Curse wheels and the joys of sports
Perna said he “did things the wrong way, probably stubbornly, for too long,” before finding success. He had expanded his coverage to the entire NFL, which helped draw in more eyeballs, and established a rhythm and a voice that kept them coming back.
But it was the Broncos’ two seasons with Wilson, the savior-turned-millstone of a floundering franchise, that truly helped the channel find its stride in 2022 and 2023, Perna said. Viewership exploded as people flocked to Perna’s weekly heartbreak.
One particularly ghastly outing, in which the Broncos lost to the Indianapolis Colts 12-9 on a Thursday night in 2022, also stands out to Perna. His publishing schedule keeps him from going to many games in person; that slog of a game was a rare exception.
Perna took his frustrations to his channel with an episode titled “The Worst Game Ever,” which went on to become another recurring theme.
The YouTube audience, it turned out, “enjoyed watching me be miserable,” Perna jokes now. But the show tapped into the highs and lows that most every sports fan experiences.
“If (Denver is) winning, you’re just going to have Broncos fans (watching) — and they’re excited with you,” Perna said. “When they’re losing, literally any fan of any team could come in and be like, ‘Look at this idiot suffering because his team let him down.’ ”
Those other fans make up some of the bread and butter of the channel’s audience. Perna looks to respect their time with real analysis tucked between the same lowbrow gags that won their attention in the first place. (“I’ve really got to find a way to spread out these poop awards,” Perna said on a recent episode, flashing an impish grin. “It makes me look immature.”)
Other gimmicks have taken on a life of their own.
Most NFL coverage features some kind of power rankings, where analysts try to list the best teams. Perna sees it as a tropey exercise in a sport where anything can happen any week.
So he’s added his own twist: a plastic, “Wheel of Fortune”-style spinning wheel — only with curses instead of prizes tied to the wedges. A spin of the wheel will doom the highlighted team. How that doom arrives, however, is part of the mystery.
Teams losing, poor outings from key players or even injuries get blamed on the wheel. For instance, Broncos star player Pat Surtain II, one of Perna’s favorite players, got hurt the week the wheel landed on Denver, even as the team won.
“Don’t let Pat find out!” Perna said. “That’s one we want back.”
Fans rewatch the episode to tally the wheel’s latest victims, Perna said, giving extra life to the channel and the community that’s grown around it.
“Russell Wilson and the curse wheel,” Perna laughs, crediting them for his success. “Those are the two things.”
Now that Perna has trialed-and-errored his way into what makes the channel work — and settled into 15-hour days to keep up with the football and posting schedules — he doesn’t want to lose focus on that community of supporters.
“The support is overwhelming and humbling, and I try to never take that for granted,” Perna said. “Because they keep you relevant in the space.”
He also gets to see how his formula as an overly dire, overly enthusiastic and consistently irreverent voice plays in an era long-missed by Broncos fans: a season of must-watch Denver football.
The wins this year have been ugly, improbable and exhilarating. Or, in a word, captivating — even for an audience outside of Broncos Country. The wins have also been piling up at a much faster clip than at any time since Perna made his show his primary professional focus.
“I’m ready for the Broncos to have some actual post-season success. Because I feel like once I’ve learned how to do this correctly, the Broncos haven’t been in the post-season,” Perna said.
“Last year, they got there. They didn’t win, of course, but we were just happy they were there. I hadn’t had the Broncos in the playoffs when I feel like I’ve done this (show) the right way. So much of (the Broncos’ success) predated that. So I’m enthusiastic that they’re winning.”
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Craig Morton, a Broncos Ring of Fame quarterback who played professionally for nearly two decades, died Saturday at his home in Mill Valley, Calif., at the age of 83.
Morton’s family confirmed his death through the organization, which announced the news on Monday.
Morton led Denver to its first Super Bowl appearance in 1977, quarterbacking the team best known for its ferocious Orange Crush defense. That season, at the age of 34, Morton earned the league’s comeback player of the year award and sparked a six-season run with the Broncos.
“He was our leader that year that we went 12-2, the first year he came to Denver,” fellow Broncos Ring of Famer and former safety Steve Foley told The Post. “It was a magical season. He was just tough as nails.”
Morton was hurt throughout the playoffs and Foley said the quarterback was in the hospital before the AFC Championship Game, when the Broncos beat the Oakland Raiders, 20-17, and advanced to their first Super Bowl appearance.
“I don’t know how he even suited up,” Foley said. “He was black and blue and yellow all over his hip. … Man, he came out and had a great game. He was just tough.
“And what a gem of a guy. Oh, yeah. He had the best heart.”
Morton was the first quarterback to lead two different teams to the Super Bowl, taking the Cowboys there in 1970 before later leading the Broncos.
Morton was born in February 1943 in Michigan, but graduated from high school in California and played quarterback in college at Cal. He also played baseball in college. He was selected No. 5 overall by Dallas in the 1965 NFL Draft, five years before the AFL and NFL merged.
Early in his career, Morton started for Dallas over Roger Staubach before Staubach eventually took over the job.
Morton, though, engineered a long and successful career in pro football.
He played in 207 career games over 18 seasons, including 72 games (64 starts) for the Broncos from 1977-82. Morton was 41-23 as a starter and threw for 11,895 yards for Denver.
“He had a confidence about himself. Kind of a swagger,” Foley said. “Our offense picked up when he arrived. We just knew he could win. He brought that to the team. And man, he had an arm. Oh, yeah. He had a gun.”
Morton was inducted into the Broncos Ring of Fame in 1988 as part of a three-man class along with Haven Moses and Jim Turner. Four years later, he was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame.
Morton’s tenure in Denver helped put the Broncos on the map.
“Absolutely, it did,” Foley said. “It made everybody wake up and say, ‘Who is this team on the interior of the United States?’ Unless you played on the East Coast or West Coast, you weren’t getting much coverage.”
Foley said he last saw Morton in the Champions Club at Empower Field during a game sometime in the past two seasons and said he remembered thinking, ‘Man, he looks great.’” Players from the Orange Crush era were surprised and saddened, then, to learn of the quarterback’s passing.
“It’s a little bit shocking,” Foley said. “He was a beautiful guy.”
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Rocky Mountain sandhill cranes battle warmer conditions due to drought
Wildlife biologist Jenny Nehring and farmer Rob Jones talk about Sandhill cranes and their impact on the San Luis Valley.
DENVER — Zoos are of necessity big gulpers of water, a fact that has some zookeepers in the drying American West working to rapidly upgrade efficiency and reduce unnecessary irrigation or leaks.
Denver Zoo, formally known as the Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance, has rapidly reduced its demands on threatened and declining water sources, including the Colorado River.
Among the upgrades is a sea lion water filtration system that allows most of the water to be cleaned and reused each time the pool is drained. That’s saving more than 8 million gallons a year, zoo sustainability director Blair Neelands said. “You can get in there, scrub it with a toothbrush and refill it with the same water,” she said.
Similar upgrades to an African penguin showcase reduced its water use by 95% by largely eliminating what’s sent down the drain. (Like a backyard swimming pool, though, these tanks sometimes still need to be drained and refreshed with new water to reduce mineral buildup.)
“The biggest thing for us is swapping from dump-and-fill pools to life-support systems,” Neeland said.
Another biggie is replacement of a 50-year-old water main with funding of about $3 million from the city. There’s no way of knowing how much that pipe had leaked over the years, but Neeland suspected it was more than a million gallons a year. The savings should become apparent as the zoo tracks its water use over the next few years.
Creating hippo-sized water savings
When The Arizona Republic visited in 2025, the zoo was on the cusp of eclipsing a goal to reduce its water use by half of what it had been in 2018. The zoo had used 80 million gallons in 2024, or about 219,000 a day, a 45% reduction in just a handful of years. Much of the savings had come in the form of smarter irrigation practices and use of drought-tolerant native plants where possible. The landscaping also pivoted to recycled “purple pipe” water from the city, which owns the zoo’s land, restricting potable water to areas where animals really need it.
“When people hear ‘recycled water,’ they get worried about cleanliness and hygiene,” zoo spokesman Jake Kubié said. “But it’s safe for the animals, and it’s not their drinking water.”
Getting past the water conservation goal would mean draining the pool where Mahali the hippo spent most hours lurking with just his eyes, ears and snout visible to visitors. Because he spent so much time in the pool, the water needed daily changes. It amounted to 21 million gallons a year, not to mention water heater bills that drove the cost to $200,000 a year, according to zoo officials. They estimated that Mahali used as much water as 350,000 four-person households.
“This facility is outdated,” Kubié said. “Some day this will become a huge saver of water.”
That day came before year’s end, and it indeed brought a tremendous savings. The zoo shipped Mahali to a new home (and a potential mate) at a wildlife preserve in Texas and drained the pool one last time. Ending the daily change-outs shaved more than a quarter of the zoo’s entire water usage from the previous year. It put the zoo significantly beyond its goal.
Denver Zoo’s water savings are part of a broader waste- and pollution-prevention effort aimed at being a good neighbor in uncertain times, Neeland said.
“Water savings and drought is top of mind for anyone who lives in the Western United States,” she said.
In Phoenix, a different mix of animals
That’s true of the Phoenix Zoo, as well, where zookeepers must maintain landscaping and animal exhibits in a city that baked under 100-degree-plus high temperatures for a third of the days last year. The zoo creates a “respite in the desert,” spokeswoman Linda Hardwick said, but has no hippos, penguins, grizzly bears or many of the other species that would require big water investments for outdoor swimming or cooling.
“We really specialize in animals that will thrive in the temperatures here,” Hardwick said.
The Phoenix Zoo uses most of its water on landscaping. After a consultant’s 2023 irrigation assessment, the staff centralized irrigation scheduling under a single trained technician and employed technologies including weather-based controllers and smart meters. Salt River Project awarded $70,000 in grant funds for the upgrades and several thousand more for training.
The zoo uses about 189,000 gallons a day, she said. That represents a 17% reduction from 2023, or 20% when adjusted for the year’s particular weather and evapotranspiration demand.
Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Reach him at brandon.loomis@arizonarepublic.com.
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook and Instagram.
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