Amendment 87: How the Broncos play into Colorado’s tax fight

Do you want the Broncos to win the Super Bowl?

Then you’d better hope Amendment 87, which brings back Colorado’s economy-strangling “graduated” income tax, loses at the ballot box this fall. Seriously.

Forget Republicans and Democrats. Forget tax policy. This is about Xs and Os, and whether Denver can afford the players who execute them and win a Super Bowl.

The Manning effectEvery successful business has star employees: rare talents without whom the enterprise simply doesn’t work. Same goes for an NFL franchise.

Every business has star employees the whole operation is built around. Sometimes that star is the chief executive. No Henry Ford, no assembly line, no affordable car. No Steve Jobs, no iPhone, foldable or otherwise. No Elon, and Teslas are just golf carts with better marketing.

But more often, the star isn’t the person running the place, it’s the person the CEO had the sense to hire. A smart CEO understands paying extraordinary people extraordinary salaries is sometimes the price of success.

Competent employees may be plentiful. Franchise-changing talent is not.

The chemist in the lab who sees the molecule nobody else does. The closer on the sales team. The reporter whose byline wins the Pulitzer. The performer who actually fills the arena.

Any company can hire a receptionist. Few can hire star employees. A smart CEO knows you pay that person absurdly well, because the alternative is watching him walk across the street or across the state border to your competitor.

Football works exactly the same way. A head coach’s most consequential decisions aren’t play calls, they’re personnel calls.

In 2012, the Broncos handed Peyton Manning roughly $20 million a year to be their star employee (adjusted for inflation, that’s pushing $40 million today). Did it work out? Ask the Lombardi Trophy sitting in the team’s front office.

Manning was worth every nickel.