“I needed a football team to really love and learned that my future husband’s entire family is from Ephrata, Pennsylvania,” she said, referring to a community about 45 outside of Philadelphia. “They’re die-hard fans and it’s contagious.”
As the couple’s love for one another grew when they got married a year later, so did their love for the team. “We are huge, real Eagles fans and it’s been a central point of our lives.”
Each game day, the family, including sons, Ethan, 22, and Aidan, 17, garb themselves in Eagles gear and Aidan lights a special Eagles candle just before kickoff. Shober said she even built an Eagles snowman on her family’s lawn this winter.
Shober said she believes the Eagles will break the hopes of the Chiefs three-peat by using “their two greatest offensive weapons,” running back Saquon Barkley and quarterback Jalen Hurts, to pull out a narrow victory.
“It’ll be a close, exciting game,” she said.
Kaelyn Townsend of Clayton said she’s “kind of been grandfathered” into rooting for the Chiefs. Her father, Sylvester, has been a lifelong fan of the team, having grown up in Kansas in the early 1960s, and her grandfather rooted for the team, as well.
“One of (my father’s) earliest memories was getting tickets to see the Chiefs play as a Christmas gift,” Townsend said. “Even though the Chiefs have had a very dominant half decade, I remember when he or I would mention the team and receive confused looks.
Up until around 2018, the Chiefs “were an entirely different team, with entirely different stats,” she said. Since then said “it’s been fun seeing the team create a new legacy.”
“The chiefs hadn’t been good my whole life, until the last few years,” Townsend said. “Before now, I remember never really hearing people in Ohio, root for the Chiefs, because only people who were really rooting for them were people who were there or from there, but now everybody loves them.”
Townsend said the Chiefs winning a third consecutive Super Bowl would be interesting because no other team has achieved that feat.
“It’s also interesting seeing how this build up to where they are now,” she said. “They were always the underdog, so people were really rooting for them heavy, but since they’ve solidified their dominance, people are like, ‘Oh, we’re tired of them,’ or ‘Oh, they’re just too good.’ or people say, ‘The referees are paid off’ or whatever. People say all kinds of stuff. I would love to see them get a three-peat just to tie that little bow on their legacy of this era.”
Sylvester Townsend said for the Chiefs to be in “a true dynasty like this is what we call ‘football heaven.’”
“I’m just enjoying it,” he said. “I know someday it will end, but hopefully not this year.”
Fannie Woods of Dayton will be watching the Super Bowl from the same spot she typically watches each Eagles game: the Back Porch Saloon in Butler County’s West Chester Twp., which attracts a following from throughout the region.
Woods, an Eagles fan since 1992, said she was serving in the U.S. military overseas in Korea when she started rooting for the team.
“They only showed certain games, and Philadelphia was one of the games that they actually showed a lot and that’s how I fell in love with the Eagles,” she said.
Woods said she believes this team is an improvement from the already strong version that faced the Chiefs during Super Bowl LVII in 2023 and even the one that won Super Bowl LI in 2017.
“Now that we have Saquon (Barkley), our run game is actually better than it was then. Jalen (Hurts) has grown more as far as his skills, so I think all of that coupled together and our new coordinators, I think we have a better chance this year than we did two years ago.”
Darrick Riggs of Springfield is hoping he and his sons, Patrick and Drew, will get to revel in a Chiefs win today, “but with the way the season and their games have gone, I can’t honestly make a prediction.”
Riggs said he started shifting his allegiances from the Cleveland Browns to the Chiefs in the early 1990s not long after Marty Schottenheimer was run out of Cleveland and hired by Kansas City. He said he had at the time — and still has — family who live near Kansas City and made the plunge into rooting for the Chiefs when Joe Montana was signed.
There’s been heartaches in the regular season and playoffs over the years, but now the Chiefs are finally the team he and other fans wanted them to be, Riggs said. The team being on the verge of a three-peat is “unreal,” he said.
If the Super Bowl ends up a close game, Riggs said he’s “very confident” that Kansas City will emerge victorious.
An Ohio State alumni and self-described “Buckeye through and through,” Riggs said getting to see both his college team and NFL team go all the way would be “the pinnacle of football fandom.”
Credit: Bill Lackey
Credit: Bill Lackey
However, “if the three-peat doesn’t happen, it’s not the end of the world. They’re gonna come back and be competitive next season and have another go at it,” he said.
Sarah Pierson of Middletown said she grew up in the south Jersey/south Philly area until she was around 10 years old, then moved to Middletown.
“Even though I have lived here much longer than my short stint in Philly, it (being an Eagles fan) just kind of stuck with me.”
Pierson said she’s raised her three children to be Eagles fans even though they were born in Butler County.
“My kids have all had Eagles birthdays,” she said. “My oldest son had his senior photos done in Eagles gear and my youngest had preschool photos in his Eagles gear. I planned and picked out every outfit this week meticulously to be wearing Eagles gear every waking and sleeping moment. We are so ready for the game.”
Pierson is predicting an Eagles victory.
“We all know how we don’t only have to beat the Chiefs but the refs as well, so my prediction is we make it too big to rig,” she said. “Eagles by 15.”
About the Author
