Coach: Hank Sienzant
Team: Denver Broncos

Hank Sienzant is the coach of the UFFL Denver Broncos, but his favorite NFL 
team is the New York Giants. But the vacant Giants team was taken by his 
brother Walt, who joined the UFFL a few weeks earlier, so Hank got the 
Broncos and kept the name.  

"I was a big Marlin Briscoe and Floyd Little fan back in the 1960's, but I
haven't really rooted for the Broncos as a team," Sienzant said. "I've kept
the name for continuity purposes, and because I now have a website dedicated
to the UFFL Broncos" (www.ufflbroncos.bravehost.com).  

Hank grew up in Newark, NJ, where his first sim action was playing a grammar
school classmate in a Yankees baseball simulation. It was a board game that
came with cards for all the Yankees and many MLB All Stars at the time
(Mantle, Kubek, Maris, Berra, etc. on the Yankees, Aaron, Mays, etc. on the
All Stars). "You rolled two dice and got a number from 2 to 12 and that gave
you the result of the plate appearance," Sienzant recalls. "It was my
friend's game and he always took the Yankees. I soon found out why." 

According to Sienzant, the game wasn't statistically accurate and was stacked
in favor of the Yankees, with their hits placed on the cards at the dice
results that come up more frequently, like 6, 7, and 8. Meanwhile, Sienzant
says, the All-Stars had their hits at the less frequent numbers like 2, 3, 11
and 12. Pitchers did not affect the outcome of the at-bat, per Sienzant.
"This was in the late 1950's or early 1960's. We were in maybe 4th or 5th
grade and had no idea how to compute the percentages of each outcome, so we
simply counted up the number of hits on each player's card. It seemed fair,
because each Yankee and each All Star had maybe four hit results scattered
around their card. Of course, I was always getting clobbered 12-1 or the
like, so I soon lost interest in playing that game, despite my friend's
protests. It never occurred to us to have a draft and pick players so we each
had our share of Yankees and All-Stars."  

"But having the deck stacked against me was excellent training for the UFFL,"
Sienzant jokes, where his expansion Broncos had a 10-54 record after their
first four seasons - including losing their first 20 in a row and having
another streak of 15 in a row. But they've turned it around since then,
winning more than half their games over the past two years.  

"I discovered APBA football and baseball games, as well as Stratomatic
football in high school. Those games were more statistically accurate, and
offered strategy as well." 

Sienzant played in a few leagues, mostly with his younger brothers for a few
years, but put the game aside until the mid-1980's after entering college in
1972. "I played four years of college football at Rutgers-Newark (not to be
confused with Rutgers New Brunswick). Our opponents were teams like Jersey
City State, Seton Hall, and Fordham, not exactly Notre Dame and USC," he
recalls. "We didn't win too many but I had a lot of fun."  

He met his wife of 26 years - Ann Marie - in 1980, and married her two years
later. Almost six years to the day of their first meeting, their daughter
Kristen was born.  

In the early 1980's Sienzant picked up the dormant APBA bug again and joined
a play-by-mail football league using the APBA board game. He soon was the
commissioner, when the founding commissioner resigned. "The league was a lot
of fun, especially once my brother Walt (also in the UFFL as coach of the
Giants), joined. Although officially play-by-mail, the members got together
for games when they could. Typically about half my games or more each year
was across the table from someone. My favorite game was my second Super Bowl,
played against Walt's friend from Allentown, Doug Brock (Doug, ironically,
would be the original coach of the expansion UFFL Broncos years later). I
wound that Super Bowl 3-0. Late in the game, Randall Cunningham bootlegged
for 20 yards and a big first down when I was running out the clock." Sienzant
made it to the SuperBowl three times in that league, winning two.  

He published a monthly newsletter for the league every month for his span as
commissioner, editing it on his Kaypro computer. "It had two floppy drives -
the five-and-a-quarter, not the three-and-a-half kind, and no hard drive. And
just 16k of memory, if I remember correctly. But she served me well for many
years." The newsletter was "a minimum of 16 pages, and many months more. But
it wasn't all me. We solicited contributions and gave money (for free agency)
back to the owners who contributed, which encouraged everyone to contribute
at least one article once a year."

In his spare time, for a few years in the 1980's, Sienzant also wrote a
monthly football column for the APBA Journal, a magazine by APBA fans for
APBA fans. "That was big for me, in a networking way," Sienzant laughs. "I
got a job in the early 1990's partly because the guy who was interviewing me
was also an APBA fan and a contributor to the APBA Journal on occasion. I
recognized his name and he recognized mine. We spent at least half of the
interview talking about APBA and sports."  

But married, with a child, and a full-time job, Sienzant's focus was on other
than APBA and football sims in the 1990's. He even stopped following the NFL
religiously for more than five years - heresy to some who knew him way back
when. As his daughter grew up, however, he found more time on his hands, and
he started to get back into football.    

Sienzant discovered Action Football in 1999 or 2000, after nearly a decade
away from APBA. After playing replays against the computer for a few years,
and doing some serious testing of the game engine ("some of the things I
found out would make an interesting article someday", Sienzant says), the
league bug bit him and he joined the KRFL (Knute Rockne Football League) in
2002. Six months or so later, he was the commissioner when the founding
commish resigned. "And they say history never repeats itself," Sienzant
laughs. Commissioner of the KRFL for five years, Sienzant stepped down from
that post this past year, due to a lack of time. But he retained his coaching
spot, and his Newark Bears are 9-2 thus far in 2008, and 46 - 13 since 2005. 
Success hasn't come has easily as in his APBA league over a decade earlier 
however, as he has only made it to one Super Bowl in the KRFL, and he lost 
that 20-17 on a last-second TD. 

Sienzant joined the UFFL in 2004, taking over the hapless Broncos when they
were 1-26 and the laughingstock of the league. Under Sienzant, they are 26 -
43, a big improvement, but one that also didn't come easy. "There were times 
I wanted to quit, that's for sure. At times I felt the rules were so stacked
against poor teams, that we could never win. But thankfully, we had some good
drafts and some good trades - although we don't trade much. Asked for his
best of each, Sienzant says without hesitation, "Drafting Bob Sanders late in
the third round. I think a lot of UFFL coaches shied away from him because of
his size, but we saw some of his action at Iowa, and felt he could be a
player. And trading-wise, perhaps the deal where I traded a kicker (Neil
Rackers), who had one phenomenal year, for a second round pick and another
kicker. I got Andrew Whitworth with the second, and the other kicker, Jason
Hanson, has out-kicked Rackers every year since the trade."  

"Another favorite is the acquisition of Roddy White," Sienzant recalls. "I
liked him a lot and while subbing as a GM for Green Bay during the UFFL
draft, I drafted him for the Packers. After the draft, the Packer got a new
owner, and I contacted him and inquired if White was available. We soon made
a deal." White is probably the best player - and the lone superstar - on the
Broncos offense today. 

And what of the future? "I hope to be in the UFFL for another few decades at
least. I've got some unfinished business here. And I may start a league of my
own someday. The concept would be simple, everybody gets the same 8-8 team,
which will have strengths and flaws, and nobody trades. The winners would be
the best - or the luckiest - coaches. Every year, a different 8-8 team would
be the team of the league. One year it might be a team with a strong running
game, another year a strong defense, etc. It would really test your coaching
mettle."  

And what of that daughter? How'd she turn out. "Oh her," Sienzant laughs.
"She did okay, graduating from MIT with a degree in Biology. And she's
attending dental school in Newark NJ, not two miles from where I grew up.
Funny how that works out."