A burly former offensive lineman was tooling around in a golf cart recently at a Broncos alumni event. He stopped and showed off a big ring on his right hand.

Was it a Super Bowl ring? An AFC championship ring?

Nope. It was a ring to commemorate the 1973 Broncos going 7-5-2.

While that might initially seem strange, consider it was the first winning season in franchise history. And it took the Broncos, who began play in the American Football League in 1960, 14 seasons to get there.

“Since that was the first winning season, a couple of guys said, ‘We need to do something to remember this turning point,’’’ said Larron Jackson, a Broncos tackle from 1971-74 who was the big fellow in the golf cart.

So some Broncos players found a local jeweler who agreed make rings for the players. More than half of the 40-some players on the roster were said to have paid between $300 and $400 for a ring.

“The team wasn’t going to pay for them, but we were extremely proud of finally getting over the hump and having a winning season,’’ said Billy Van Heusen, a Broncos wide receiver and punter from 1968-76. “It was a really big deal. There was a push at that point to get some respect in the league.”

Like Jackson, Van Heusen long has proudly worn his ring. The rings have a shiny stone in the middle and read “Denver Broncos,” and include the last name for the designated player and his jersey number. They have inscribed on them the words, “Pride, Poise, Performance.”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Broncos. It’s a team that never has been honored and gets lost in the shuffle for a franchise that has been to eight Super Bowls and won three.

But many from that team remember it as a watershed event in Broncos history. Just ask Joe Collier, the defensive coordinator in 1973.

Collier was an assistant coach with the Boston Patriots for the first two seasons of the AFL and then a Buffalo Bills assistant from 1962-65 and their head coach from 1966-68. He remembers what the Broncos had been like in their early years.

“They were probably the poorest-run team in the league,’’ Collier said. “They wore hand-me-down uniforms and they were kind of the laughingstock of the AFL.”

The Broncos, who debuted in the AFL wearing infamous vertically striped socks, somehow managed to go 7-7 in their third season in 1962. But they had losing records in the other nine of their AFL seasons, never winning more than five games.

Collier, who arrived as an assistant coach in 1969, said things had begun to turn around after Lou Saban became head coach in 1967. But the Broncos still had losing records in their first three NFL seasons, from 1970-72, until they finally turned it around in 1973.

“It was long overdue,’’ said Collier, who remained with Denver through 1988. “I thought we were going to have a good record before that because we were starting to come around a bit. But it was pretty good, that season.’’

There had been some optimism in 1972 when the Broncos went 5-9 and suffered three losses by three points and another by seven. The season included a 30-23 win at Oakland, breaking a 14-game losing streak to the Raiders.

Making their Broncos debuts in 1972 were head coach John Ralston and quarterback Charley Johnson. And the two would take another step together in 1973 when Ralston was named AFC Coach of the Year and Johnson threw for 2,465 yards and an AFC-most 20 touchdown passes.

“We felt we were making progress to becoming competitive and one of the missing ingredients was at quarterback,’’ Van Heusen said. “So that was really the biggest addition. When Charley came in, he made a world of difference. It really helped us turn the corner.”

Johnson, who had previous stints with the St. Louis Cardinals and Houston Oilers, was in his 13th NFL season in 1973. He would play for the Broncos through 1975 and eventually was named to their Ring of Fame.

“That was a great time, a great memory,’’ Johnson said of the 1973 season. “It was a wonderful time. Some of the teams that were counting on beating us easy couldn’t do it anymore.”

In addition to Johnson, the Broncos were led by running backs Floyd Little and Joe Dawkins, who had 979 and 706 yards rushing, respectively. Little made the Pro Bowl along with tight end Riley Odoms, who had 43 catches, and wide receiver Haven Moses, who had 28.

On the other side of the ball, defensive tackle Paul Smith made the Pro Bowl. And the Broncos had emerging stars in defensive end Lyle Alzado and safety Billy Thompson.

Still, the Broncos got off to just a 1-3 start. But Jackson insists nobody was worried.

“We went into the ’73 season intent we were going to be a much better team,’’ Jackson said. “We may have lost three in a row, but I think the attitude on the team was just different than before.”

The Broncos’ confidence paid off. They didn’t lose any of their next seven games, going 5-0-2 and taking over first place in the AFC West.

That run included one very memorable night at Mile High Stadium. On Oct. 22, 1973, the Raiders showed up for the first Monday night game involving the Broncos. ABC announcer Don Meredith, referring to his marijuana use, famously quipped before the game, “We’re in the ‘Mile High City,’ and so am I.” Tickets for the game were at a premium.

“It was an amazing night for Denver,’’ Van Heusen said. “The city of Denver was absolutely on fire, just excited for that game.”

Thompson whipped the crowd into a frenzy when he opened the scoring by returning a first-quarter fumble 80 yards for a touchdown.

“It was huge for me in front of our fans,’’ Thompson said. “I picked it up on the run and it was Katy, bar the door. Nobody was going to catch me. The crowd went crazy.”

The Raiders eventually went ahead 23-20 on a 49-yard field goal by George Blanda with 36 seconds left in the game. But Johnson and the Broncos marched down the field and Jim Turner kicked a 35-yard field goal with 3 seconds remaining to force a 23-23 tie. That left the Broncos at 2-3-1 and the Raiders at 3-2-1.

“That’s OK,’’ Johnson said of the loss. “We scared the hell out of them. It felt like a victory.”

The teams met again in Oakland in the final game of the regular season. The Broncos were 7-4-2, the Raiders 8-4-1, and a win would give Denver the AFC West title and the first playoff berth in franchise history.

In the third quarter, the Broncos cut the deficit to 14-10 on a 13-yard touchdown pass from Johnson to Moses. But disaster soon struck when Johnson was hit hard by a Raiders defender and lost for the game with a concussion.

“We believed we could come back in the game and win the division, but that was major,’’ Jackson said.

Backup quarterback Steve Ramsey came in and couldn’t do much. He completed only 4 of 16 passes with two interceptions and the Broncos lost 21-17.

“There was great disappointment because we had really high hopes of beating Oakland and getting our first shot at the playoffs, but after everything settled down, we realized we had a pretty good year,” Van Heusen said.

Then again, some wanted more. Thompson, who played for the Broncos from 1969-81 and made their Ring of Fame, said he bypassed the opportunity to buy one of the rings.

“It was a nice feature, but I wasn’t excited about it because I wanted to be in the big thing,” Thompson said of having Super Bowl aspirations.

Thompson did reach the “big thing” in 1977, when the Broncos made the playoffs for the first time and defeated Oakland 20-17 in the 1977 AFC championship game before losing 27-10 to Dallas in Super Bowl XII. Thompson got an AFC championship ring, which he said the team paid for and that he wears proudly.

But Collier said the path toward that Super Bowl really started in earnest in 1973. The Broncos had two more winning seasons in the next three, and, although Ralston was gone after the 1976 campaign, there were 12 players remaining from 1973 on the 1977 team.

“I could see us starting to come on and things really picked up in 1977,’’ Collier said.

By then, the Broncos long had shed their image as laughingstocks.