Enlarge By Jerry Mosey, AP Broncos QB Frank Tripucka scores a touchdown against the Titans of New York in 1962. The team had worn striped socks the two previous seasons.   ABOUT THE AFL SERIES USA TODAY will celebrate the American Football League's 50th anniversary this summer with a series of retrospectives. THE AFL, 50 YEARS LATER Photos: Key moments and decision makers from the AFL's impactful tenure Upstart to the big time: How the underdog AFL changed the course of the NFL Patriots: Nomad team had humble beginning before reign as NFL champs Dolphins: After slow start in the AFL, Shula-led Dolphins flourished Bengals: AFL's Bengals became Paul Brown's entry back into NFL Chargers: Early days with Al Davis set stage for Raiders rivalry Raiders: Lamonica's Raiders took pride in wide-open offenses of AFL Chiefs: After they left Dallas, the Chiefs became the toast of the AFL Jets: Broadway Joe's win in Super Bowl III etched league's place in lore Bills: AFL glory days came too early for Bills to make a Super mark Oilers: Team owner Bud Adams' influence often overlooked

Just as the phoenix rose from the ashes, so have the Denver Broncos' vertically striped socks.

Considered so ugly their coach burned them publicly at an intrasquad game in 1962, the brown and yellow leggings in which the Broncos performed for their first two years in the AFL are part of the team's "throwback" look for the coming season.

Is that throwback or throw up?

Frank Tripucka, the Broncos' first quarterback, sighs at the memory. Speaking by phone from Bloomfield, N.J., Tripucka flatly says the original Broncos uniform was the ugliest thing he ever wore. And he played for three NFL teams before spending seven years in Canada.

Hideous? Horrible?

"Unquestionably," Tripucka says. "We were a very poor ballclub, financially. They took anything they could get their hands on."

Literally.

Those first uniforms came from a defunct college bowl game (the Copper Bowl). Rips and tears had to be repaired because there was no way to get more of these dandy duds. The colors were technically "seal brown and gold."

"Mustard yellow would be a more accurate description," says Jim Saccomano, the team's director of public relations, a club employee for 32 years and a lifelong Denver resident who has seen almost every game the Broncos have played.

Denver's second coach, Jack Faulkner, set fire to the old socks at the club's intrasquad game in 1962, with new ownership in place, a little more money available and new colors of orange, blue and white adopted. Yet no one who ever saw the vintage hose will forget them.

The Broncos still have one of their originals at their headquarters in Englewood, Colo. Working from photographs and memories, they've re-created the old uniforms and the leggings for the two games during which they will wear them in 2009.

They'll model the home version Oct. 11 when they play the New England (formerly Boston) Patriots, commemorating the first AFL game, which Denver won. Then they don the road suit a week later on Oct. 19 against the San Diego Chargers.

Tripucka was part of a contingent that came from the Canadian Football League to fortify the Broncos when the AFL was born in 1960. General manager Dean Griffing reached into his background to hire Frank Filchock as the first coach, and Filchock called Tripucka, who had quarterbacked for him with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, to serve as an assistant. It wasn't long before he was pressed into playing time.

Think there was some romance to this new league, to the organizing and establishing of a franchise in a city that had no major league sports?

"It was a joke," Tripucka says. "It really was a joke."

Training camp? Held in Regina, Saskatchewan.

A playbook? "They put the plays on a blackboard, and you had to copy them. That was it," Tripucka says. "There weren't any handouts."

Hitting the road? "We were like lost souls when we traveled. Everything was second-class," Tripucka says, recollecting two weeks on the road with practices at a high school in Plainfield, N.J., before the Broncos played the New York Titans (later the Jets) in New York.

Tripucka, now 81, put up the first 3,000-yard passing season in U.S. football history in the AFL's inaugural season, throwing for 3,038 yards, 24 touchdowns and a league-high 34 interceptions. The Broncos won their first two games but finished 4-9-1.

What a weird journey.

Tripucka was the backup at Notre Dame to Johnny Lujack for two unbeaten and untied seasons (1946-47). As a senior, he led the Fighting Irish to a 9-0-1 record, the tie with Southern California coming in the final game. The Philadelphia Eagles drafted him in the first round in 1949 and traded him to the Detroit Lions.

He left Detroit after one season for 2½ with the Chicago Cardinals and part of one with the Dallas Texans (the defunct 1952 NFL version, not the AFL's Texans) and then went north of the border for, he says, better pay.

The Broncos later retired his No. 18 jersey.

In football terms, the Broncos were the equal of their original uniforms. They did not have their first winning season until 1973, though they began emerging as an NFL power in 1977, when they went 12-2 under Red Miller. They represented the AFC in Super Bowl XII, where they fell 27-10 to the Dallas Cowboys.

Billy Thompson joined the team in 1969 as a third-round pick. He played cornerback and safety and returned kickoffs and punts for 13 seasons. He was a three-time Pro Bowl pick and was enshrined in the Broncos' Ring of Honor in 1987. He is the club's director of community outreach.

The merger with the NFL was already underway when Thompson became a Bronco and then got in a year as an AFL player before the 1970 realignment left him with special memories.

"Absolutely," he says. "The old AFL teams were always trying to attract fans, so it was a wide-open league, where the NFL was more grind-it-out, more close-to-the-vest. People like defense, but they like to see scoring, and the AFL was high-scoring."

Thompson also remembers what it was like to play against the Kansas City Chiefs, coached by Hank Stram, and the San Diego Chargers, under Sid Gillman.

"Kansas City was using three- and four-receiver sets. They were really ahead of the curve. We hated to play them because we had to look at so many formations. Now that's what everybody does," Thompson says. "Sid was another one in San Diego, with a very high-powered offense, a lot of formations, a lot of motion."

The Broncos might be NFL establishment now, but once upon a time they were part of a new and different league. They had to be built from the ground up, stocked with socks and jocks.

No telling what happened to those old jocks. The socks? They just won't go away.