5. Sports Authority Field at Mile High, Denver Broncos



Denver has the NFL's best home winning percentage going back 30 years, at .700.

The Mile High thing is no myth. The Broncos seem to enjoy pointing this out.

A sign above the visiting locker room entrance reads: "ELEVATION 5,280 FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL."

Denver cornerback Champ Bailey noticed it when he played his first game there, in 2001 as a member of the Redskins.

"Oh, yeah," Bailey said. "In an up-tempo game, the altitude wears you out. Nobody coming in here is used to it."

The human body performs at maximum efficiency in sea-level air, where the concentration of oxygen is 20.9 percent and fully saturates the hemoglobin in the blood. The higher you climb, the lower that number gets.

"It's real," insisted former Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi. "It affects you. The oxygen you're breathing into your muscles isn't the same. You feel yourself gasping."

In the Broncos' home opener against the Steelers on Sept. 9, Ben Roethlisberger's 3-yard pass to Mike Wallace gave Pittsburgh a 19-14 fourth-quarter lead. And then Peyton Manning orchestrated no-huddle drives of 10 and 12 plays, and the Broncos went on to score 17 unanswered points.