Springfieldian Tom Masterson, an employee of Springfield Public Schools and former teacher and principal, is headed to the Super Bowl to watch his beloved Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles.
The executive director of elementary learning for SPS found out in September that he'd been named the Chiefs' Fan of the Year by the NFL. That honor came with a trip to the Super Bowl.
KSMU's Michele Skalicky chatted with Masterson by phone Wednesday as he and his wife were headed to the Kansas City International Airport to fly to New Orleans on Thursday.
"I feels very surreal," he said. "I don't know that it's honestly going to feel as real as it will until we get to New Orleans. It's kind of just felt like (an) out-of-body experience. Like, this is not something I ever thought would happen in my life."
Masterson learned he'd been chosen as Fan of the Year during the Chiefs home opener. The team had invited him to the game and told him he was going to be the Lamar Hunt Legacy honoree — those are Chiefs fans who have demonstrated that they're serving their community.
"And then they had kind of had a ruse of like, 'hey, would you come up to the world's largest tailgate by the stadium? Bring your tailgate people with you, and we're going to shoot some, like, promo videos, and I was like, "Oh, yeah, that'd be great. Cool,'" he said.
"And then when we got up there, the president of the Chiefs kind of greeted me. I thought, 'well, that's kind of bizarre, like, for this, but that's awesome.' And then we met the stars of the Hallmark movie that came out with the Chiefs. I met them, and then, as we were them, they said, 'hey, you know, we have somebody else we want you to meet, and out came the owner of the Chiefs, Clark Hunt.'"
Masterson said he was given a custom jersey and a football, plus one more surprise.
"And then [Hunt] was like, 'well, we actually have one more thing. You get to go to the Super Bowl and gave me the big Super Bowl tickets, and so it was pretty wild."
"Especially, as a younger Chiefs fan, it seemed like the Chiefs might never make the Super Bowl. I mean, it was some hard years there for awhile," Masterson said. "And then, so now, having the option to go and see them hopefully get the three-peat is, it's pretty cool."
Masterson and his wife arrive in New Orleans Thursday. They'll attend the NFL Honors award show Thursday night.
"We get to walk the red carpet. We get to see some of the, you know, players and coaches and stuff get to walk the red carpet as well, we get to be there and then we get to be at the event, and at that event is where they'll announce who won the Fan of the Year," he said.
They have tickets to the NFL Fan Experience, which Masterson said will offer fun activities around the Super Bowl. "And then at the Super Bowl on Sunday, we get to go down on the field before the game."
But when Masterson tells most people about his trip, it's not necessarily the Chiefs they ask about.
"What most people are more interested in, honestly, is, 'you think you'll get to meet Taylor Swift?' And so, I mean, yeah, that'd be cool," Masterson said. "The game that I went to where I found out I was fan of the year, we got to go by the locker room access, and we got to be like, I don't know, four or five feet of Taylor Swift as she came in and got some cool pictures of her. But, yeah, she's obviously brought a lot of cool attention to the Chiefs Kingdom."
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