He’s the Super Bowl’s ultimate fan: Larry Jacobson has gone to every single Super Bowl game.
“Fifty years later, I could have investment in an apartment house,” Jacobson said. He belongs to an elite group of fans called “Never Miss a Super Bowl Club.”
The ticket cost 50 years ago? Just $12. The 76-year-old San Francisco resident sat down with NBC Bay Area in his Noe Valley home. He calls the second floor room, adorned with patches from every Super Bowl and shelves full of footballs, his “man cave.”
NBC BAY AREA: How much has 50 Super Bowls cost you?
LARRY JACOBSON: I don’t know and I don’t want to know.
NBC BAY AREA: Then you must be excited you don’t have to travel this year.
LJ: I’m saving money on airfare, rent-a-car and hotel, so yeah I’m saving a few bucks. But the best thing about having the Super Bowl in San Francisco is we get two weeks of hype. I love the energy of the city during the Super Bowl.
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NBC BAY AREA: During Super Bowl I, you took a girl on a first date?
LJ: I put the whole thing together for less than $100. That’s the tickets, the airline fair, the rental car, the program, parking at the airport, all that was under a hundred bucks. The tickets were 12 bucks and the program was a dollar. Long of the short was she wasn’t impressed with the football and she wasn’t impressed with me.
NBC BAY AREA: So I take it that was your last date?
LJ: I don’t even remember her name.
NBC BAY AREA: Do you have a favorite Super Bowl?
LJ: I’ve been a season ticket holder of the 49ers since 1953. As a 49ers fan, my favorite Super Bowl is Super Bowl 23. On the last play of the drive, I saw the Niners line up. John Taylor was on the line and I saw him running up and he was running so fast I thought he’d be out of the end zone before Montana found him and threw the ball to him. That just played out right in front of me and I’ll never forget that play. It’s my favorite play of all time.
NBC BAY AREA: Tell me how you met Don, Tom, Stan and Bob – your fellow “Never Miss a Super Bowl Club” members.
LJ: There was a newspaper Q&A, and one of them was: Has anybody been to every Super Bowl? And they named three people, Don, a man named Stan, who has since passed away, and myself. I called Don and we found Tom and Bob, and we all met for Super Bowl 34 in Atlanta. I’d never met these guys before and I didn’t know whether they were going to drink up a storm or what would happen.
NBC BAY AREA: But it sounds like you hit it off with everyone, especially Don.
LJ: I said, ‘Who do you write for?’ He said, ‘I write for the philatelic magazine.’ He writes for a stamp magazine. What the hell is a guy who writes for a stamp magazine doing at the commissioner’s press conference? I said to myself immediately, this guy is a phony. He’s my kind of man.
NBC BAY AREA: Any other antics over the years?
LJ: At Super Bowl 6 in New Orleans, I got arrested. I was parked five feet from the curb, which I guess isn’t okay there. A police officer stopped me and I said, ‘Don’t you think you’re being a little chicken bleep about this? He said, did you call me chicken bleep? I said, yes I sure did. He says you’re under arrest. I bailed myself out. There was a cab out front. I took the cab back to the stadium and actually got back before the game started.
NBC BAY AREA: I’m surprised this is the first year you are receiving free tickets to the game.
LJ: Why? I’m not Avis. I’m not American airlines. I’m not Budweiser. I’m a guy off the street. Nobody comps me anything…until now.
NBC BAY AREA: How many Super Bowls do you hope to go to?
LJ: I’ll go until they put me in a box.
