S.F. Examiner: Broncos win for Manning, send bouquet to Bowlen

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

“The best laid plans …” You know the rest, words from a poem by Bobby Burns, the Scot who more than a century ago wrote words of warning, words telling us that our hopes and dreams more often do not work out. Or as Burns wrote, “ ..gang oft a-gley,” or as we would say, go often astray.

But not the plans of John Elway. Or the hopes of Peyton Manning. Or the long-ago dreams of the family of Pat Bowlen.

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©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

S.F. Examiner: Defense, ball control can send Manning off in glory

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

It’s as if the game already has been played. As if the Carolina Panthers won the Super Bowl. When, in fact, the Denver Broncos will win it. Win it ugly, the way underdogs usually do. Win it by keeping the Panthers from winning it, with defense, with ball control, with the sort of breaks teams like Denver inevitably get in games like this, and thus are described as lucky rather than good.

But in football, luck is not so much bestowed as created.

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©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

S.F. Examiner: Broncos forced to overcome tumultuous upbringings

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

A letter from the president. So few are sent. Katrina Smith had to be special, and in a way she was, holding the letter from President Barack Obama that commuted an excessively severe prison sentence which had taken her away from society, away from a son who was to become a football star while she had become an inmate.

Demaryius Thomas was a sixth grader, 11 years old, when Smith and her own mother, Minnie Thomas, were convicted and incarcerated 16 years ago for making and selling crack cocaine in Georgia.

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©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

S.F. Examiner: Former Cal running back, Vallejo native keeps defying odds

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The distance Cortelle Javon Anderson traveled should not be measured in distance — practicing for Super Bowl 50, he is only 70 miles from his hometown of Vallejo — but in achievement. He’s done what few beyond Anderson or his mother believed was possible in the classroom or on the football field.

It’s a tough, industrial community, Vallejo, filled with the offspring of workers — many African-American, many from the South — who came to work in the Mare Island shipyards during World War II. The headlines from Vallejo these days too often are negative ones dealing with crime or unemployment.

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©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

S.F. Examiner: Are Phillips, Broncos playing possum?

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The current Raiders coach, Jack Del Rio, was the Broncos previous defensive coach. The current Broncos defensive coach, Wade Phillips, was out of work but hardly out of ideas. Or out of superlatives about the current player who concerns him most, Carolina quarterback Cam Newton.

“He makes plays nobody else makes,” Phillips said.

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©2016 The San Francisco Examiner