This Fan Sheds Suit for Different Uniform: One That’s a Lot Looser

When Pete Rozelle’s marketing arm reaches out to touch someone, the Mike Clapps of America answer on the first ring.

They discard their three-piece suits and the stuffed shirts they wear by day in order to burn teddy bears in effigy by night and have their faces painted by The Good Fairies of Hullen Ridge.

Mr. Rozelle: Step up and shake hands with your creation, Mike Clapp, the everyman of NFL arenas.

The 31-year-old New England fan tried to calm his pregame jitters Sunday by having a jubilant maiden apply a splash of Patriot colors--to his forehead.

Clapp lives in the Boston suburb of Wilmington, Mass., and is general manager of D.B. Roberts Co., an electronics firm. Armed with a Super Bowl seat that drew offers of “$400 cash,” this Patriot season-ticket holder left Boston Thursday and will return Monday a changed man.

“This has been an experience I will never forget,” said Clapp, who flew to Houston, with a stopover in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, then rented a car and drove eight hours to Party Town. “I should have done this earlier in my life. Where else can you go out (Bourbon Street) at four in the morning and have Bears’ fans on one side yelling at Patriot fans on the other side. The verbal abuse was great, and the girls were worse than the guys.”

The Good Fairies of Hullen Ridge, a company specializing in “entertainment specialties for children,” did a brisk business before Super Bowl XX in the hotel opposite the Superdome. Using red and blue, a woman was enthusiastically painting “Go Pats” on Clapp’s right cheek. His left cheek sported the club logo and “PATS” was inscribed across his forehead.

“I was going to the bathroom when I saw this stuff out here,” Clapp said. “I said to myself, ‘I’ve gotta do this.’ It was just an impulse . . . but everything this week has been an impulse. I’m staying with a friend so the whole trip will cost me just $425. I’m due back at work Tuesday morning at eight o’clock, and I’ll be there in my three-piece suit and tie.”

Clapp will not bring back any souvenirs to his co-workers, claiming, “if you buy for one, you’ve gotta get for all,” and he understands their bewilderment at his odyssey into a world where a set of Super Bowl pins cost $30 and a sweater goes for $50.

“They’re a bunch of stuffed shirts,” he says about the workers back home. “They can’t believe I’m here. I think it’s the city that brings out the craziness, but this has been even more crazy than I imagined.

“My buddies and I hung a bear off a balcony the other night. We tied a piece of string around a stick and carried it all around town. We called it Dead Teddy. Then we tried to burn the thing, but it was soaking wet from us dragging it along the ground. We carried it over our shoulders like Tom Sawyer and some Chicago fans tried to rip it away from us.”

Clapp planned to leave New Orleans a few hours after the game and drive back to Houston in time for a 9:30 a.m. plane to Boston. The return flight will again take Clapp through O’Hare.

Dead Teddy will stay behind.