After 14 years of treating every day on the job with the Broncos
as if it were his last, Rod Smith must do what he feared most.
Punch the clock and go home.  Quittin' time.  It's difficult to
call the millions of dollars made by NFL players an honest day's
labor, unless you're talking about Smith.  He was Denver's
ultimate working-class football hero. Although Smith wore No. 80
for the Broncos, his uniform was a blue collar and an orange
lunch bucket.  While he will be remembered for winning two
league championships and catching 849 passes for 11,389 yards,
the number that defined Smith was a wrinkled $1 food stamp he
carried to remind himself what a long, tough route had been run
to make it in the pros.  "We didn't have jack," Smith told me
more than once, succinctly describing a childhood of poverty in
which an oven sometimes served as the lone source of heat in his
family's home.  As he today steps to a podium and announces his
retirement, here's hoping Smith employs one of his pet, cheeky
phrases uttered