Broncos to play the Gotham Rogues in 2012?

No, the Denver Broncos are not going to play against a CFL or UFL team in 2012, as the title of this article may suggest.  Rather, they’ll open the season against the Gotham Rogues.

That is, if you consider the Pittsburgh Steelers and Gotham Rogues one and the same, which they are.

The Dark Knight Rises came out in late July and former Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward has been identified in the film’s trailers.  In all, about a dozen Steelers players are in the film, portrayed as members of the Gotham Rogues football team.

Warner Brothers obviously could not use real NFL cities and names for fear of copyright infringement, otherwise the team could have been called the Gotham Steelers.  I have not yet seen the film, but ESPN’s DJ Gallo has and reports that the film fails to achieve football authenticity.

Per Gallo —

• Batman’s archenemy in the film, Bane, walks right into Heinz Field with zero resistance.  Maybe Gotham was playing Chicago and security was busy looking for a fan that pointed a laser in Brandon Marshall‘s eye?

• The game must have been blacked out on TV because a lot of seats were empty.  On September 9, that won’t be the case in Denver.

• The film only has five to ten minutes of stadium footage while the rest of the movie highlights “faraway prisons and fights and bats and cats.”

The Broncos will open the season against the Rogues Steelers at Sports Authority Field in one month.  Unlike Heinz Field, Denver’s stadium is not expected to cave in.