There is no stopping the man. Dion Rich is 84 years old and still utterly shameless. He will do anything – anything! – to get into another Super Bowl, or even just to gain entry into the Super Bowl Media Center in New York.
“I’ll tell you what you do,” Rich is saying, about cracking that media center. “Leave me a credential and then I’ll sign one of my books for you. Or your photographer can lead me right inside.”
The greatest Super Bowl gatecrasher that ever lived is still wheeling and dealing, still operating. He’s only missed one of these games, the Jets over the Colts, for a stupid, nonrefundable ski trip. He won’t let that happen again, ever. So he was catching a flight from his home in San Diego to New York on Friday, leaving himself a couple of days to come up with an idea, a contact, and a reasonably priced ticket if possible.
“I’ll get a real ticket,” he says. “Don’t want the NFL to think I’m going to be sneaking in. Last thing I need.”
Rich used to ride team buses right into the stadium, pretending to be an assistant coach. Or he’d sneak past a young, rookie security guard who was looking the other way. When the authorities got wise to him, he’d wear a beard and bifocals for a disguise. This crazy stuff worked, most of the time. Look at the pictures. He is on the podium with Vince Lombardi and Pete Rozelle, for trophy time. There he is, helping to carry Tom Landry off the field in triumph. There he is again at the end of another title game, walking arm in arm with Joe Gibbs. He’s crashed Oscar shows, the Golden Globes, All-Star Games, an Olympics, the Kentucky Derby. It was a mischievous habit he first picked up during the 1940s as a kid, sneaking into movie theaters in San Diego. He couldn’t stop himself.
Look again. That’s him, again, sitting next to Nicole Kidman.
Mostly, though, he’s crashed the Super Bowl.
He just can’t do it anymore. Not the way he once did. Football’s Zelig has been grounded recently by FBI surveillance, now by the New Jersey State police, by the law enforcement guys looking for the real bad guys. It’s been this way since Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, in New Orleans, his last successful break-in. That’s where the security crackdown began and where Rich started searching for free or cheap tickets instead of illegal entry.
“My age has no bearing on it,” says Rich, who will admit only to a decline in short-term memory. “I’m more astute at gatecrashing now at 84. I have more acumen now, but it’s a whole new ballgame, for two reasons. I’ve screwed it up, because they know me. And because of 9/11, because of the terrorists, you get through one metal detector, then there’s another, then there’s another. They’re scanning your ticket. It can be done, I think, but it would have to be by using a lot of my techniques over the years.”
Some of those techniques were detailed in his 2003 book, “The Life of Dion Rich,” written with sportswriter Bill Swank and the late sportscaster, Charlie Jones. They weren’t that complicated. They required outrageous chutzpah more than anything else. He would cozy up to club officials, find a way to fit into someone’s entourage. When that didn’t work, he’d slink through unsecured, locked doors as they opened from the inside.
Now, though, look what he’d be up against. The New Jersey State Police have a SWAT team there at MetLife Stadium.
So he will have to (gulp) pay for a ticket to MetLife Stadium. It’s happened before, he confesses. Rich owned four bars in San Diego. He still does a lot of charity work and has made plenty of contacts who know people who know people. But sometimes, even that network of connections fails him. When absolutely necessary, he’s purchased seats for outrageous sums, just like the un-bearded masses.
“When I don’t get a ticket with an NFL team, I have to pay for it,” he says. “That can cost $2,000 or more. In Dallas, I paid $4,000 for a ticket. I told a friend to get me a ticket regardless of the price. Then it was $4,000, and I was obligated.”
He didn’t spend $4,000 for Seahawks-Broncos. He is coming to New York, a man in search of an angle. There is always an angle with Rich.
“If you ever get out to San Diego, I’m really wired there,” he says. “I can get you into the zoo, into SeaWorld.”
