Portland. Sunday is the Super Bowl in the USA, but the stands at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, will only be filled to a third at the final of the American Football League NFL due to corona. Among the 22,000 spectators there will be three hardcore fans who have been in the arena every year since the first final game in 1967: Don Crisman, Tom Henschel and Gregory Eaton.
Between the ages of 79 and 84, the three risk groups of older people who are particularly likely to develop severe Covid-19 disease belong to the elderly. In this respect, they don’t want to plunge into the adventure blindly, but they definitely want to be there, as they assured the AP news agency. The tickets are bought.
This year everything is different
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The number of those who can claim to have seen every Super Bowl in the stadium is getting smaller every year. Usually, the three men use the major sporting event to tell each other about how their year has gone and of course to talk shop about football. This year everything is different. They want to meet outdoors for lunch, with sufficient distance. In the stadium they will also separate several rows.
“Of course I am concerned. Who wouldn’t be My doctor is concerned. He said I shouldn’t drive, ”said the 84-year-old Crisman, who has to travel to Florida from Maine on the US east coast. He hasn’t been on a plane since returning from the last Super Bowl. This time he brings his daughter to the game, who works as a medical technician in a corona vaccination clinic.
In any case, more important than the outcome of the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is that they get home safe and sound. Crisman and Eaton have both already received the first corona vaccination, Henschel not yet.
He himself ended the tradition that year, said Crisman, but his friend Tom Henschel convinced him to drive. The two first met at the Super Bowl in 1983 and found out that neither of them had missed a final. They only met Eaton a few years ago. Many others from their elite football fan club have died in recent years.
Eaton said a lot has changed in the 54 years since joining the stadium for the Super Bowl. In the first final game, he was rejected in a hotel because he is black. Now he’s especially looking forward to seeing his two friends. In the five years he has known the two of them, he said they have become a real conspiracy. “We are like a brotherhood.”
