Club of Friends Who Have Never Missed a Super Bowl Head to Miami for LIV
The “Never Miss a Super Bowl Club” is continuing their streak this year by traveling to Miami to see the San Francisco 49ers take on the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV.
The group’s founding members, Tom Henschel, 78, and Don Crisman, 83, were both in attendance at the AFL-NFL World Championship Game at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1967, which would later become known as Super Bowl I.
But the football fans didn’t meet until years later when they crossed paths while waiting in line for a ticket to The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1983, they told USA Today in 2019.
The then-strangers realized they both attended every Super Bowl after striking up a conversation — and with Super Bowl XVII scheduled that week in Pasadena, California, the club was born.
As the years went by, Henschel and Crisman met other Super Bowl fanatics who had done the same, and the group grew to six at its peak.
After the deaths of three of their members, Henschel, Crisman and Gregory Eaton, 80, are now the only surviving members.
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Crisman said he was lucky enough to come across people who were selling tickets to Super Bowl I. If he hadn’t, the club may have never been formed.
“They worked for a bank in Denver that was involved in a sponsorship with the Broncos, and five tickets were given to the bank,” Crisman recalled in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Nobody wanted them.”
According to the newspaper, only 16 people are officially recognized for attending every Super Bowl, with Henschel, Eaton and Crisman among them.
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Keeping the streak alive has been expensive with the rising costs of airfare and Super Bowl tickets. The lowest price for a ticket from a major ticket reseller is almost $4,700 for a nosebleed seat, whereas the price for a seat at the stadium hosting Super Bowl I was about $10.
But the group’s dedication has been unwavering.
“I miss weddings. I miss funerals,” Eaton, a Detroit Lions fan, told AJC of the feat. “But I’ve never missed Super Bowls.”
Kickoff for Super Bowl LIV is at 6:30 p.m. EST at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
