Talk of the Towns

The Super Bowl has come to San Diego in all its corporate opulence, a projected $232-million boon to the local economy. And while the Broncos and Packers arrived Sunday night for a week of sun and hype, Leland and Janet Hack remained in Stoughton, Wis., already the game’s biggest beneficiaries.

City officials expect 100,000 visitors to spend an estimated $1,500-$1,700 each for accommodations and entertainment in the next week, but in the dead of a Wisconsin winter the Hacks passed on an all-expenses paid trip to San Diego and Super Bowl tickets in exchange for $5,000 to send their son to trade school.

“A trip to San Diego would have been nice, but my son comes first,” says Leland Hack, a Packer fan who has worked for 23 years as a school custodian. “I didn’t get all the schooling I wanted; I had to quit school in the eighth grade and go to work because my dad was sick.

“I want my son to have a better chance than I had.”

The Stoughton Garden Center purchased some of the Packerland Super Raffle tickets, which included Super Bowl tickets and 245 other Packer prizes, and as a holiday promotion presented them to their customers. Janet Hack thought it would be nice to win a Brett Favre autographed football.

The phone rang, and the Hacks, about to become the envy of everyone living in that icebox, asked about the small print on the bottom of the raffle ticket. They had never been to a Super Bowl, or even a Packer game. Born and raised in Wisconsin, they had traveled to South Dakota and Tennessee, but never to California. But more important, none of their children had been able to go beyond high school, and now one of them had a ticket.

“When I called them to inform them they had won I was struck by the fact they weren’t very excited,” says Peter Vlisides, who helped with the raffle. “We did the same thing last year and the winner was so excited when we called.

“I could tell right away they were thinking, and when people here heard about what they did, they were in shock--even kids I know in school who know the cost of education. They said they would have gone to the game.”

The Hacks never hesitated.

“The contest people gave us a few days to think about it, but there was nothing to think about,” says Janet Hack. “We have two daughters, 33 and 34, living with us at home, and they’re good girls, but we never had the money to send them on for schooling. Our son, Bill, has been working since the ninth grade at the Country Kitchen saving money, and he knows what he wants. He wants to become a cook and own his own restaurant.

“Finances just aren’t real good, and this was our chance to send him to the Madison Area Technical College, which is $1,500 a semester for books, uniforms and cutlery. This will get him through the two years he needs and set him up for another year of baking if he wants it.”

There were friends and neighbors who told them they were foolish for passing on a lifetime vacation, but the local newspaper took an interest, and then the radio and TV stations began calling.

“Oh gosh, I don’t know what the big fuss is all about,” says Janet. “I would hope other parents would think the same way.

“Country Kitchen has a scholarship where it gives 50 cents for every hour Bill works. . . . There’s already a sign-up sheet on the Country Kitchen door for Bill’s new restaurant. We’re Packer fans and we’ll be wearing our sweatshirts for the game, but listen, my son’s a good boy and he has a dream. And now he’s got a chance.

“We’ll watch the Super Bowl on TV. We’ll get to see the replays too.”

So will most of the heretics in San Diego who have been squawking for weeks because the public gets no opportunity to become part of the Super Bowl crowd in Qualcomm Stadium, which was expanded for the big game with public money.

“I had one lady call and ask for tickets on the 50-yard line,” says Sandie Hughes, who manned the phones for the San Diego Super Bowl Host Committee. “I told her none were available, and she said, ‘OK, how about the 55- or 60-yard line?’ ”

Charger fans, who have been tortured for the past year watching their team flounder, have been even more upset. Duped into buying season tickets to watch a lackluster team in a stadium with plenty of available seats each week, they held onto the promise of maybe winning the right to buy Super Bowl tickets.

“Enough, Uncle!” wrote San Marcos’ Julie Walker in a Viewpoint letter to The San Diego Union-Tribune recently. “Our Charger season tickets have a 1962 date on them. We have grumbled every time the Chargers raised prices, despite too many mediocre teams and even more mediocre coaches [except for Don Coryell and Bobby Ross]. But still we paid up. . . . But now we’re spitting fire after learning that, despite being among the few season ticket holders who have hung on since 1962, we do not get to buy Super Bowl tickets, The Chargers have finally made us say uncle.”

Charger owner Dean Spanos said the team received 5,800 tickets from the league, and after giving a few hundred to some of the first fans to buy the team’s club seats, the rest were made available in a weighted lottery to season ticket holders.

Some fans expected more, especially after the city of San Diego pushed for a $60-million expansion of the stadium, which eventually became a $78-million project relying on public funds. The city of San Diego hosted Super Bowl XXII, which drew a crowd of 73,302, several thousand fans being placed in temporary seats.

The NFL agreed to return to San Diego for Super Bowl XXXII, and once again in temporary seats, but city officials argued that a stadium expansion would help the city attract a Super Bowl here every three to five years and at the same time encourage the Chargers to remain happy here, although they were already bound by a lease.

The city guaranteed to make up the difference in rent adjustments if the Chargers did not sell out each game, and as a result, San Diego lost more than $1 million in the first year of their new agreement with the team.

“It’s hard getting excited about the Super Bowl when your own team has no chance from almost the beginning to be in it and there’s all this controversy about the stadium expansion,” says Vic Hanhan, who owns The LaFiesta Deli, just down the street from the stadium. “We were told the stadium expansion would be a good thing because the Super Bowl would be here every three or five years, but if it doesn’t come back like that, then the public was tricked into supporting the expansion.”

The Super Bowl will not return to San Diego without spending millions more to improve the visitor’s locker room and the press box and provide for more seating. Despite the expansion, the stadium will fall short of the NFL’s demand for 70,000 seats for a Super Bowl with an anticipated attendance of 68,500, because more than 7,000 seats were considered obstructed views and unusable.

“Certainly people in the community remain aggravated with the stadium situation,” says Chuck Nichols, president of the San Diego Super Bowl Host Committee, “But I don’t think anyone is holding that against the Super Bowl. We got off to a late start raising funds because of what happened, but we have all the money we need right now--$4 million in cash and [in services provided]--in sponsorships with almost no cash from the city or county.

“Our job now is to present the best show possible. There might be other issues to deal with in terms of getting future Super Bowls, but if we don’t do this really well, then that really hurts us.”

If early crowds are any indication of success, San Diego is doing very well. The NFL experience outside Qualcomm Stadium drew 30,000 people Saturday and a similar crowd Sunday; and huge throngs are expected for a weekend downtown party, which will spread across a 30-block area in the Gaslamp Quarter District.

And, prosperity is expected to spread throughout San Diego and its outlining areas.

“It’s a wonderful windfall for a lot of people,” says Sal Giametta of the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau. “The visitor industry is a $4-billion boost for the local economy and the Super Bowl is the event of all events.”

Super Bowl XXXII, while a wonderful windfall for San Diego, will also be remembered by some for jump-starting young Bill Hack’s career as a cook.

* SAN DIEGO VIEWPOINT