In a move that doesn't seem right, the Denver Broncos Ticket Office revoked the Hayeses' season tickets, just because some medical issues and family priorities temporarily kept them from the games.

Jim and Amber Hayes were at Mile High on that crazy night in 2011 when Tim Tebow threw the touchdown to Demaryius Thomas in overtime to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs. They jumped up and down and threw high-fives along with the 76,000 other elated Denver Broncos fans watching live. They were there again two years later, huddling in sleeping bags in single-digit temps on the 35th and highest row of Section 506, when the Baltimore Ravens beat the Broncos in a double-overtime playoff heartbreaker. [gallery columns="2" size="full" ids="19527,19525"] And then, the following September, they took their seats yet again, cheering the Broncos on as Peyton Manning took sweet revenge on the Ravens in the home opener, throwing seven touchdowns for the win. Jim and Amber are die-hard Broncos fans and have been since they were kids. They were on the Broncos' infamously long season ticket waiting list for seven years before their names popped to the top in 2011. And after they finally got their long-awaited season tickets (a set of four), they attended more than half the games each season over the next four years, faithfully making the trek to the stadium with friends and family as often as they could. [gallery columns="2" size="full" ids="19531,19526"] In August 2015, right as the Broncos' season was kicking off, Jim and Amber had a baby. They were only able to attend two games that Super Bowl-winning year as their focus shifted a bit, but they were so excited about the future, knowing that as their little boy Nolan grew up, they'd be able to take him to Broncos games -- that the great fan traditions that they'd developed as a couple would now carry on as a family, to Nolan, and also to future children they hoped to have. [gallery columns="2" size="full" ids="19530,19524"] All those dreams ended this spring when the Hayeses received an email from the Broncos Ticket Office, stating that their season tickets had been revoked.

Wanting to grow our family, we went through intense fertility treatments starting in September of 2016," Jim Hayes wrote in an article he posted on LinkedIn on July 13. "This led into early months of pregnancy [with their second child], so we didn’t attend a game in 2016. We sold all of our tickets through NFLTicketExchange.com, the only authorized site the Broncos promote to season ticket holders for selling tickets."

Since they needed to take a break from game attendance for medical reasons, Jim and Amber believed that there should be some kind of exception. So they appealed, explaining why they'd had to sell the tickets last season. After all, there are multiple life events that could stand in the way of being able to attend games, and surely the ticket office would be reasonable and understanding. But on April 27, they received another email from the ticket office (which seemed very much like a form letter) informing them that the decision had not changed. In Jim's LinkedIn article, he makes several great points, specifically that his and Amber's use of the Broncos-authorized NFL Ticket Exchange site to sell the tickets (the teams make a cut of each sale) had allowed the Broncos to monitor the selling/buying and revoke the tickets based on that data, whereas the sales of ticket holders who used other non-authorized sites were not tracked. "The Broncos made money off the ticket re-sales and are trying to control what fans do with their tickets, which isn't very 'free market,'" Hayes told us at OCN. The Hayeses also question whether or not the Broncos Ticket Office actually reviewed their appeal, given that the response was a form letter. They had even provided the ticket office with photos so the decision makers could see that they were real fans -- that they weren't just trying to make money off of the tickets. [caption id="attachment_19528" align="aligncenter" width="968"] Image courtesy of Jim Hayes[/caption] Jim and Amber weren't the only ones whose season tickets were revoked this year. In all, the Denver Broncos Ticket Office's "weeding out" of season ticket holders affected 144 accounts and freed up approximately 400 seats. In a similar situation, Aurora resident Mike Fletcher had been a season ticket holder since 1977 before he missed games in 2016 due to a collapsed lung and lung-reduction surgery. His appeal was also denied. “It’s been difficult for me to hold those tickets at times,” Fletcher told The Denver Post in May. “At times I couldn’t give those tickets away. A season-ticket holder has to give them their money in February of each year." We asked Hayes if he'd thought about putting his name back on the season ticket waiting list. Certainly, with the multitude of incredible fans in the Denver metro area, Broncos tickets will always be a bit of a high commodity, cherished and appreciated by whomever is lucky enough to snag them. And there will always be a problem with the ticket holders who have no intention of going to the games and only sell tickets for the profits, thus hiking up the prices for everybody. But in their effort to whittle down the wait list and make sure that season tickets are only held by real fans, did the Broncos Ticket Office handle the situation appropriately, or even correctly? That's the question. Regardless, we think it would be great if the Broncos Ticket Office made the situation right. #operationgiveticketsback Read Hayes's LinkedIn article here. What do you think? Do you believe it was wrong of the ticket office to take away their season tickets? Do you have any great ideas for how the ticket office could make it right? We'd love to hear about it in the comments.

All images courtesy of Jim Hayes.

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