John Brodie, who recently passed away, was a success in Colorado both on the football field and on the golf course
By Gary Baines – 2/9/2026
On the weekend the United States turned 222 years old, a certain football player put up the numbers he needed to win in Colorado.
But it wasn’t on the football field; it was on the golf course.
John Brodie, who played 17 seasons as an NFL quarterback and was the league MVP in 1970, prevailed on July 4th weekend in 1998 at an event that was very similar to the famous Lake Tahoe celebrity golf tournament — but that was held in Colorado.
The former San Francisco 49ers standout came out on top at an event known as the North American Digicom Celebrity Classic against a field that included John Elway, Joe Theismann, Johnny Bench, Mike Schmidt, Ivan Lendl, Jim McMahon, Mike Eruzione, Dick and Bobby Anderson and Rudy Gatlin, among others. The 36-hole event was held at what is now known as The Club at Inverness in Englewood, and was the first of seven annual celebrity golf events that included the John Elway Celebrity Classic (2000-04).
We bring this up because the winner, Brodie, passed away recently at age 90, and because he had quite a record of success in Colorado. As a football player, Brodie and the Niners went 2-0 against the Denver Broncos: winning 19-14 in San Francisco in 1970 en route to the 49ers going to back-to-back NFC Championship games in the 1970 and ’71 seasons; and 36-34 on Sept. 23, 1973 at Mile High Stadium during Brodie’s final NFL season.
Then, in a variation of the Hale Irwin situation, Brodie went from being an elite football player who also was very good at golf to being an athlete who succeeded at an extremely high level on the course. Indeed, six years after giving up a job as an NBC analyst for NFL games (as well as some golf) to pursue competitive golf full-time, Brodie won a tournament on what is now PGA Tour Champions, the 1991 Security Pacific Senior Classic in Los Angeles. The field that week included now-World Golf Hall of Famers Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Lee Trevino and Billy Casper.
As for Colorado, besides winning the North American Digicom Celebrity Classic at Inverness, Brodie tied for fourth place at the Denver Post Champions of Golf at TPC at Plum Creek in Castle Rock in late May 1987, carding scores of 68-72-67. That was first of four top-5 finishes Brodie posted in his PGA Tour Champions career.
In other Champions events in Colorado, Brodie tied for 26th in the Champions of Golf at Plum Creek in 1986 and missed the cut in the 1993 U.S. Senior Open at Cherry Hills Country Club.
But it was at the Celebrity Players Tour event at Inverness in 1998 where Brodie emerged with a victory in the Centennial State. I was fortunate enough to be covering the tournament that week as a sports writer at the (Boulder) Daily Camera, and it was a treat to witness him score one of his final big victories on the golf course.
“I’m showing signs of life,” the then-62-year-old Brodie said that week.
Brodie, like Elway a former Stanford quarterback (and NFL MVP), was none too shabby a golfer even during his college football and NFL heydays. He was a two-time letter-winner at Stanford (1955 and ’56) and competed in two NCAA golf championships. He later teed it up in 29 PGA Tour events, including two U.S. Opens, making nine cuts. He was inducted into the Northern California Golf Association Hall of Fame in 2023.
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com