Ten years into a friendship that would last nearly five decades, John Finney could be honest with Pat Bowlen, no matter the topic.

And in 1983, the subject was the Broncos. During one of their regular lunches at the Outrigger Canoe Club in Honolulu, Bowlen told Finney he wanted to buy the NFL team. Finney’s response was blunt.

“I said, ‘Pat, why don’t we just get on your plane and go see a game — you don’t need to buy a football team,’” Finney recalled last week.

“Nope, I want to buy a team,” Bowlen said.

Fortunately for the city of Denver, the state of Colorado and the entire Rocky Mountain region, Bowlen was not dissuaded and eventually purchased the Broncos.

Sellouts, championships, and history followed.

An era that made Bowlen the most successful sports team owner in Colorado history ended late Thursday when he died after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s. He was 75.

“Pat Bowlen had a competitive spirit with a great sense of humor,” the Bowlen family said in a statement. “We will forever remember his kindness and humility.”

Bowlen’s passing came less than two months before he will be inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on August 3. The Broncos won 13 AFC West titles, posted 21 winning seasons and reached the playoffs 18 times during his tenure.

“Pat was driven by the will to succeed and his competitive spirit made him a great leader,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. “Our league is better because of Pat’s extraordinary contributions.”

Said former Broncos quarterback and current general manager John Elway: “I will miss Pat greatly and will always treasure the times we had together. He was a tremendous mentor and a tremendous friend.”

Bowlen established a culture of winning without meddling in coaching or personnel decisions. His leadership style was equal parts understated and demanding — he stayed in the background and reveled in others receiving the public credit. But he always wanted to be kept abreast of the Broncos’ plans, on and off the field.

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“He never really issued directives, but he damn well wanted to know what was going on and he never wanted to be surprised,” said team president Joe Ellis, who was the director of marketing when Bowlen bought the team.

During Bowlen’s tenure, the Broncos won 333 regular season games, third in the league behind New England (346) and Pittsburgh (334) and recorded a .598 winning percentage, fifth-best in American pro sports.

The Broncos’ on-field success propelled their popularity to an unmatched level in the Rocky Mountain region. They sold out all 300 home games with Bowlen as owner and the franchise he and his family purchased for approximately $78 million is now valued at $2.6 billion, according to Forbes.

In the fall of 2013, Bowlen filed with the league to relinquish day-to-day control of the team because of the progression of Alzheimer’s; he stepped away from the team in July 2014.

The Broncos were placed in a family trust that was established years prior to eventually transfer ownership to Bowlen’s seven children. Ellis assumed control of the daily operations of the team and as one of the three trustees is tasked with appointing the team’s next controlling owner.

Bowlen is survived by his wife, Annabel (who announced her Alzheimer’s diagnosis in June 2018) and their five children, Patrick Dennis III, John Michael, Brittany Alexandra, Christianna Elizabeth, and Annabel Victoria; his first wife, Sally Parker, and their two children, Amie Klemmer and Beth Bowlen Wallace; his brothers Bill Bowlen and John Bowlen; and sister Mary Beth Jagger.

Two of Bowlen’s daughters have expressed interest in succeeding him as controlling owner. Wallace, 48, announced her intention in May 2018, a request that was rebuffed by the trustees. Five months later, Brittany, 29, said it was her goal to succeed her father. In March, Ellis announced that Brittany Bowlen would be rejoining the franchise “within the year” in a “senior management position,” potentially starting a path to succeed her father.

DESIRE TO BE NO. 1

The pinnacle of Bowlen’s ownership came with three Super Bowl titles, victories against Green Bay in 1997 (as an 11-point underdog to the defending champion Packers), Atlanta in 1998 (over Bowlen’s first Broncos coach, Dan Reeves) and Carolina in 2015 (Pat did not attend the game).

The Broncos’ first championship, in their fifth appearance, was the ultimate break-through led by coach Mike Shanahan, quarterback John Elway and running back Terrell Davis. At San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium, Bowlen stood atop a midfield podium, raised the Lombardi Trophy and saluted Elway.

“There’s one thing I want to say here tonight and it’s only four words,” he exclaimed. “This one’s for John!”

Elway recalled the scene years later and said: “That was Pat. He was never a guy who wanted to be out front. He gave you the opportunity and wasn’t the guy out there with the ego the size of New York. He was almost shy and would step back and give the glory to everybody else.”

Following the Broncos’ Super Bowl 50 victory, Elway returned the favor.

“Well, I’m going to say this and he would not want me to say this. But this one’s for Pat!” Elway said.

A desire to win championships and build a premier franchise drove Bowlen. The plaque next to his statue outside Broncos Stadium at Mile High reads, “Be Number One In Everything.”

Steps outside the Broncos’ locker room at their training facility is a picture of Bowlen underneath his quote saying, “I Want Us To Be Number One In Everything.”

Bowlen loved the players and the feeling was mutual. His first stop most mornings was the training room to ask about the health of the players.

“The man cared about people and his players,” said Broncos director of sports medicine Steve Antonopulos, who worked for the team for the entirety of Bowlen’s tenure. “He parked his car every day and came right in and said, ‘How are we doing?’ He cared so much about his players, it was unbelievable.”

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ALWAYS A COMPETITOR

Born on Feb. 18, 1944, in Prairie du Chien, Wis., a small town along the Mississippi River, Patrick Dennis Bowlen played football as a receiver for the Campion High School Knights, a former Jesuit boarding school for boys. His father, Paul, was Canadian and earned his millions as an oil wildcatter in Alberta. Pat’s mother, Arvella, grew up in Prairie du Chien.

Bowlen also competed in hockey and track before graduating in 1962. He ended his football career after his freshman year at the University of Oklahoma to focus on his studies. He earned a business degree in 1965 and, three years later, a law degree. He served as an executive in his father’s company, an oil-and-gas firm called Regent Resources, and later opened a law practice in Edmonton, Alberta. But made his name and his fortune in real estate development.

But no matter the activity or the stakes, Bowlen’s interests were rooted in competition.

In 1984, shortly before purchasing majority ownership in the Broncos, Bowlen competed in the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii, where he had a home on Oahu. Among 1,100 entrants, he finished 135th.

That was the case with his management of the Broncos — he loved the race and wanted to win the race. He was the first owner in pro football history to reach 300 overall wins in his first 30 years and he’s the only owner in NFL history to reach the Super Bowl with four different head coaches (Reeves, Shanahan, John Fox and Kubiak).

Elway predated Bowlen in Denver by one season. Acquired in a trade with the Baltimore Colts, Elway joined the Broncos in 1983, creating a new level of excitement.

Elway’s penchant for fourth-quarter comebacks turned Denver into one of the league’s toughest places to win for opponents. That trend extended beyond his retirement. During Bowlen’s tenure, the Broncos were 214-86 in regular season/playoff games for the NFL’s best winning percentage at home (.713).

But Bowlen’s era was not entirely smooth.

Bowlen inherited Reeves as coach and kept him for nine more seasons, through three Super Bowl losses and a 5-11 record in 1990. After an 8-8 finish in 1992, Bowlen fired Reeves.

In 1995, after a short run with Wade Phillips as coach, Bowlen brought Shanahan back to Denver (he served two stints as a Broncos assistant) to begin a 14-year journey. Shanahan’s teams won the franchise’s first two Super Bowls, but with the Broncos mired in mediocrity, Bowlen surprised many by firing Shanahan after the 2008 season.

“This is as tough as it gets,” Bowlen said that day with tears in his eyes.

To replace Shanahan, the Broncos hired Josh McDaniels, then the youngest head coach in the league (age 32) and no head-coaching experience.

The experiment was a disaster.

Following a falling-out with quarterback Jay Cutler, who was traded to Chicago, McDaniels led the Broncos to a 6-0 start in 2009, but then a 5-17 fall that included being caught illegally taping a 49ers practice in London. After only 22 months on the job, McDaniels was fired.

Throughout McDaniels’ tenuous run, Bowlen remained cognizant of his customers. Amid the Cutler fiasco, Bowlen penned a letter to the fans because he felt “compelled to give our community and our fans an explanation,” and to assure them his goal will always be to win championships.

Soon after firing McDaniels, Bowlen stopped making many public appearances as his Alzheimer’s was in its early stages.

In 2011, Bowlen made the play that had eluded him for more than a decade: He brought Elway back into the fold, appointing him as executive vice president of football operations.

With Elway in charge of the football operations, the Broncos have reached two Super Bowls (one win), made one of the biggest free-agent additions in league history by signing quarterback Peyton Manning, constructed first one of the NFL’s most prolific offenses and then one of the league’s best defenses and hired his longtime friend Gary Kubiak (a Bowlen favorite) as coach.

“CONSENSUS BUILDER”

On a parallel track to Bowlen’s desire to do anything to make the Broncos a sustainable winner was his effort to grow the sport as a whole.

Bowlen served a combined 91 years on 15 different committees and was a key player in the league’s television deals and labor negotiations.

“He was in our New York league office more often than most owners because he volunteered to serve countless hours on league committees, including labor relations and television,” said Joe Browne, a retired NFL executive. “Over the years, he became someone whom the commissioners relied heavily on for advice and counsel.”

Bowlen worked closely with commissioner Pete Rozelle and his two successors, Paul Tagliabue and Goodell.

“I worked with over 100 owners,” said Tagliabue, who was commissioner from 1989-2006. “I would put Pat in the top five.”

Leading Bowlen’s league-level achievements was chairing the broadcast committee. In 1993, he and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones negotiated a record television deal that put the NFL on track to be the most lucrative sports product in American television. On the cusp of an agreement, Bowlen and Jones played hardball with the networks to double their rights offer to $400 million.

“It forever changed the economic picture of the league, as it probably should have, because the NFL is the principle No. 1 entertainment form in our country,” said Dick Ebersol, the former head of NBC Sports.

In 1998, Bowlen secured an $18 billion television contract for the NFL that was the richest single-sport contract in broadcast history.

Bowlen’s greatest television achievement, and maybe his greatest league-level accomplishment, was working with Ebersol on a Sunday night package that included a schedule superior to Monday night and introduced flexible scheduling, allowing the network to swap out its regularly-scheduled game for a higher-profile matchup late in the season.

The Sunday night football broadcast has been America’s top-rated program for eight consecutive years.

Asked if the Sunday night deal was Bowlen’s greatest non-Broncos accomplishment, Ellis said: “I think so. He was a big advocate, proponent, and cheerleader for it when some people were quite skeptical. Pat was in Dick’s corner on the notion that was going to work and it would be good for our game and good for the NFL. Pat and Dick were right.”

In the area of labor, Bowlen represented an even-keel voice that the players’ side respected. And internationally, Bowlen pushed to expand the NFL’s reach. The Broncos played eight international preseason games in six countries in the 1980s and ‘90s.

In Denver, Bowlen quietly invested millions in the community. As chairman of the board of Denver Broncos Charities, he donated nearly $30 million to local organizations since the fund was created in 1993. In 2013, he was given the Mizel Institute Community Enrichment Award for his contributions, which included funding of the Denver Broncos Boys & Girls Club.

“He recognized the Broncos were a huge community asset and if they were going to be seen as that, they had an obligation to give back and he picked up on that very quickly in the early stages of his ownership and never wavered,” Ellis said.

LOOKING BACK, AHEAD

Bowlen’s purchase of the Broncos began when he was introduced to Kaiser through mutual friends. Along with his brother John and sister Mary Beth, Bowlen bought 60.8 percent of the Broncos from Kaiser, who paid $30 million for the team three years earlier. In 1985, the Bowlens bought the remaining 39.2 percent from John Adams and his attorney, Timothy Borden.

Bowlen consistently reinvested money into the franchise and contributed more than $150 million for the team’s stadium construction plus an additional $30 million for improvements. In November 1998, voters agreed to fund 75 percent of what became a $400 million stadium, which opened on Sept. 10, 2001 – the night before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In 1990, Bowlen moved the team’s headquarters to Dove Valley, which underwent a $38 million improvement project in 2014 that included the Pat Bowlen Fieldhouse.

“I couldn’t tell you I thought it was going to become what it is,” Bowlen said in August 2013 regarding ownership. “To me, it was a real challenge. It takes you a while to adjust. It was a fun deal. You have your disappointments. You have your losses and your wins. When you come in and buy a football team, you don’t really understand the picture until you’re there for a while.”

Helping Bowlen’s transition, of course, was having Elway at quarterback. Bowlen’s admiration for Elway continued after No. 7 retired. Elway was offered an option to buy 10 percent of principal stock in the team for $15 million and an additional option to buy another 10 percent by forgoing $12 million in deferred salary that Bowlen owed him. Elway later told The Denver Post he wanted to take the deal.

“I went to court so that was a battle with Edgar Kaiser and Mr. Bowlen,” Elway said in 2016. “So there are circumstances there that didn’t make it work out, let’s put it that way. It wasn’t because I didn’t want it to.”

The circumstance: A condition of Kaiser’s sale to Bowlen, which would later be disputed in court for nearly a decade, was that Kaiser would have right of first refusal if Bowlen tried to sell a portion of majority interest. When Bowlen tried to make Elway a partner, Kaiser sued. The courts ruled in Kaiser’s favor in 2004, but Bowlen won on appeal four years later.

The future of the franchise is essentially in the hands of Ellis, who is controlling owner delegee, team counsel Rich Slivka and Denver attorney Mary Kelly. They will select Bowlen’s successor.

The next owner faces an enormous challenge attempting to meet the standard created by Pat Bowlen. He was the Broncos’ best owner. He was the best owner in Denver sports history. And the Broncos became one of the best franchises in America’s most popular sport with him in charge.

“You know that’s the reason the organization is where it is, because of him,” Shanahan said. “He gave you every chance to win and was just a very unselfish guy.

“His legacy will go on.”

Former Denver Post staff writer Nicki Jhabvala contributed to this story.