You can't fake this kind of love

Even a soulless Super Bowl gives true fans a rush

MIAMI -- The live experience of pro football doesn't belong to the fans as it once did. The NFL gave the Bears and the Colts just 17.5 percent of Dolphin Stadium's 74,512 seats, leaving real fans on the sideline.

Then there are fans like Kevin Sherman. The 51-year-old season ticket holder from Hammond, Ind., won Super Bowl tickets in the Bears lottery. He had promised a ticket to his best friend.

"The night after the [NFC] championship game, he looked at me, shook his head and said, 'I can't afford it,'" said Sherman, who works at the BP Whiting refinery. "The airfare and hotels were too much for him."

Lots of people would have booked the extra Super Bowl ticket with a scalper. Sherman turned to another friend, attorney Brian Less. He gave Less the Super Bowl ticket. Sherman's next fee is certain to be less than more.

"I was shocked," said Less, 43, of Dyer, Ind., sitting in the upper deck of Dolphin Stadium. "It took me two seconds to decide to go. It was a good gesture. He's a good man."

Jerry and Carol Rowe have had season tickets for roughly 40 years, dating to the days the Bears roamed Wrigley Field. The bespectacled Jerry Rowe even looked like a young George Halas on Sunday, roaming Dolphin Stadium with Chicago authority.

"Our tickets were along the third base line at Wrigley," said Rowe, 69. "I had a big post in front of me." The Rowes obtained their unobstructed Super Bowl tickets in the Bears lottery.

"There's a much more affluent crowd at games today," said Rowe, a retired auto dealership owner in Belvidere. "The average guy on the street cannot afford tickets. That's the biggest change. Television has done a wonderful thing to get the NFL going, but it has been a disservice to the fans."

Several hundred working-class Bears and Colts fans drove RVs to the Miami Everglades Campground, about 30 miles outside of Miami. They were firemen, union workers, bartenders, the kind of fans who used to be able to see a game in person. One group of Indianapolis fans brought along a bright blue "Colts Bus." They did not have the moxie of Bears fans. The bus arrived on a flatbed truck.

These fans harbored little hope of getting a ticket. They just wanted to be near the game, to cast a golden lariat around a moment they could call their own.

Jeff Romeo of Lake Villa drove a 38-foot Winnebago through Friday's tornado that killed 20 in central Florida. Romeo had never driven an RV until he embarked on his journey to help celebrate the 75th birthday of a friend's father.

"It was three in the morning," said Romeo, a 46-year-old union electrician. "They were telling me, 'Come on, Sally, go!' I was going 55. You couldn't see headlights in front of you. At one point I had two trucks on each side of me." Five Bears fans were in the RV; three more were trailing in a car.

The road trip was part of Eddie Bauer's 75th birthday party. Bauer lives in Libertyville and used to run a catering company that included Mike Ditka as a client. Bauer's son Tom flew in from Honduras to be on board. He almost didn't make it back.

When the Bears won the NFL title in 1963, a lasting image is New York Giants quarterback Y.A. Tittle crumpled on the Wrigley Field soil.

A lasting image of Super Bowl XLI is the competing Playboy and Penthouse parties Saturday night. The game has evolved into America's premier cultural spectacle.

Real fans stand out.