Kiszla: TV dispute that keeps Avs and Nuggets fans in the dark just keeps trucking down road to nowhere

In the nasty television war that has kept loyal fans of the Stanley Cup champion Avs and two-time MVP Nikola Jokic in the dark for more than three years, your favorite NHL and NBA teams have fired a new shot at Comcast:

Truck you.

“Why doesn’t Comcast like Colorado fans?” Kroenke Sports and Entertainment executive Matt Hutchings declared Tuesday, while standing on a makeshift stage outside Ball Arena, flanked by furry mascots from the Nuggets and Avs.

Bankrupt of any good ideas to end the endless dispute between Altitude and Comcast, billionaire Stan Kroenke has hired a truck. The truck is covered in video boards that beam fighting words from jilted mascots Rocky and Bernie that growl, “Why did Comcast dump us?” and “Comcast has blacked out Avalanche fans for 1,468 days.”

The truck will be driven around Denver, nice and slow, like Usher cruising the streets in his drop top, with the hope of shaming Comcast into making Avalanche and Nuggets games available to subscribers of its cable TV service.

What? Was the clown car not available for rent?

This new Altitude offensive in a TV war that has caught fans in the crossfire might seem pathetic and desperate if it wasn’t so ridiculous and absurd.

But this is not a drill or a “Saturday Night Live” skit. It’s a publicity stunt when we all know what executives of Altitude and Comcast need to do is lock themselves in a room until a deal is hammered out.

Concerned about the high price of gasoline Kroenke will be forced to dig into his wallet to pay, not to mention the carbon footprint implications for the Avs and Nuggets, I asked Hutchings what he hoped to achieve with the truck.

“That’s a great question,” said Hutchings, whose desire is to curry favor from fans and encourage them to put pressure on Comcast to resolve the dispute. “As you know, 73 days ago, we made an offer to Comcast. We’ll take the same deal as AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain (which broadcasts games of the Colorado Rockies). We have four professional sports teams on our network. We’ll take the same deal. We never heard back from them.”

Kid you not: This truck with video boards on side is the current plan of billionaire Stan Kroenke to get Nuggets and Avs games seen at your house after 3-year dispute with Comcast. pic.twitter.com/DPZ0jbzns4

— Mark Kiszla (@markkiszla) October 11, 2022

Now, I’m not very smart, but if Altitude wants to make maximum impact with this truck, couldn’t it be stipulated in the new $100.8 million contract for Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon that he must deliver free pizzas to elementary schools in his spare time?

Or perhaps the truck could be parked in the parking lot of grocery stores, where Vic Lombardi, everybody’s favorite Altitude on-air personality, could set up shop beside the Girl Scouts selling cookies and beseech shoppers to sign up for subscriptions to Evoca or Fubo, broadcast services that do allow Colorado sports fans to pay their hard-earned money to watch the Avs, Nuggets, Rapids and Mammoth.

Hey, I get it. All forms of media, from your old trusty newspaper to your newfangled regional sports network, have been disrupted and challenged by technological upheaval and the evolving tastes of sports fans.

If Kroenke is business savvy enough to build a net worth of approximately $13 billion, not to mention so competitive he can win the Super Bowl and Stanley Cup in the same calendar year, it seems like Stan the Man could come up with a better idea than a truck to get the Avalanche and Nuggets games back in as many Colorado households as possible.