KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Super Bowl LVIII tickets will cost you close to $10,000 a piece. But a pair of Kansas City-area teachers will be going to the game for free.
Lincoln Middle School teacher Kayla McLellan in Missouri will be going as the first Norma Hunt Super Bowl Champion of Education program honoree. Wichita-area teacher Kelly Kennedy is going as well.
NewsNation affiliate WDAF first introduced you to Kennedy as he was being surprised with the Super Bowl tickets at the beginning of the season by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Now things worked out perfectly for him to get to see his favorite team in action.
“Here we go! Super Bowl bound! Go Chiefs!” Kennedy shouted at the window as he drove the “Arrowhead Express” before last year’s Super Bowl.
It’s a Chiefs-themed red bus he owns along with six friends. Last year he wasn’t really going to the game, but they’d spend hours driving around Wichita pumping up Chiefs Kingdom.
They use the bus to drive the six hours round trip to every game at Arrowhead, like he’s been doing for nearly 30 years as a season ticket member.
This year, his friends will all be watching the game in Kennedy’s Chiefs man cave.
But he and his wife won’t be there. He was named Chiefs Fan of the Year at the team’s first game. An honor that comes with two Super Bowl tickets.
“This is mind blowing. I don’t know what to say. That was so cool,” Kennedy said in September after receiving the tickets from Goodell at the World’s Largest Tailgate. He thought he was being asked to come on stage as the Lamar Hunt Legacy Seat honoree.
So all season he’s been hoping the Chiefs would make the Super Bowl, but he’s not the only one.
Kennedy is an elementary school computer teacher in a classroom filled with Chiefs Kingdom flags and 30 computers, each with a different Chiefs screen saver.
“They’ve been giving me hugs and high fives and knuckles all day long. They are excited for me,” Kennedy said of his students.
He’s also a swim coach who co-founded the Swim to a Wish relay that’s raised more than $250,000 for Make a Wish of Missouri and Kansas. Still, in the vast Chiefs Kingdom, he’s honored to be the Chiefs Fan of the Year and hopes to represent them proudly at the Super Bowl.
“I feel very blessed to be picked out of how many ever thousands and thousands of Chiefs fans that there are. I’m still trying to get that to sink in how I was picked,” Kennedy said.
Along with the game, Kennedy and the rest of the team’s Fans of the Year are invited to the Sports Illustrated Party and NFL Honors event where the overall NFL Fan of the Year will be announced. You can still vote for the winner.