Sheboygan Denver Broncos house hard to miss

With dark blue siding and a blaze orange roof emblazoned with a Broncos logo, Don Kober's house on 14th Street in Sheboygan is hard to miss.

Arguably Sheboygan's biggest Broncos fan, Kober is preparing for the big game — but without a big party. He'll be cheering on his team with family.

"I'll be here. My nephew and my stepson will be coming over," he said. "Years ago, I would have been going nuts right now."

In the past, Kober said he would have thrown a party, but football just does not have the same draw since his wife's passing from cancer.

“Since the passing of my wife, I don’t go crazy anymore. I can’t,” he said. “Any time I feel myself being too happy, I feel guilty, so I don’t get into it so much. It’s so immaterial. How short life can be.”

The two had been married just shy of seven years — wed on July 7, 2007 — when his wife died of cancer in 2013. During the months of chemotherapy treatments, the couple's home had fallen into disrepair — and a citation from the city arrived the month of his wife's passing telling Kober to paint his home.

So, why Broncos blue? Kober said he and his wife both liked the color. The blaze orange roof came later.

“The roof was not planned at that point,” Kober said of the home's initial painting. “I had a reddish roof, and I thought it was close enough to Broncos' colors.”

However, once the blue was done, the color of the roof stood out as a problem. Kober, also a huge Packers fan, said the roof reminded him of the team's rival.

"It looked like a Chicago Bears house," he said. "With the dark red roof and the blue, it was total Chicago Bears. Being a Packer fan, I couldn't take it."

Collectibles and memorabilia of both teams are displayed prominently throughout Kober's home — and he said his ideal scenario every year is for the Packers and Broncos to face off in the Super Bowl.

Kober lived in Colorado for 11 years in his "younger, crazy days," where his fandom for the Broncos developed. When he moved to Wisconsin, he said he found parallels between the two teams' fans, and became a devotee of both the Packers and the Broncos.

When it came time to choose a color for his house, though, blue — it seemed — was just the better color.

“Those colors look awfully good on the house,” Kober said. “I haven’t heard anyone say it’s ugly. Not a single person.”

Reach Phillip Bock at 920-453-5121, pbock@sheboyganpress.com, or @bockling on Twitter.