University Prepares to Host Super Celebration

Huey Lewis and the News to perform in Buck Shaw Stadium

Nicolas SonnenburgTHE SANTA CLARAJanuary 28, 2016

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s football fans from every corner of the nation descend upon the Bay Area to watch the Denver Broncos duke it out with the Carolina Panthers, a few thousand of those visitors will find their way to Santa Clara’s campus the day before Super Bowl 50 at Levi’s Stadium.

Christened a “Super Community Celebration,” the university will play host to a day of festivities payed for and organized by the City of Santa Clara on Feb. 6.

At noon, NFL players and celebrities will match up in a charity flag football game. Flo Rida, Ray J, Hugh Jackman, Michael Vick and Antonio Brown are just a few of the big names who will face off. In the afternoon, NFL cheerleaders and the Santa Clara Vanguard will lead spectators in a spirited pep rally. And in the evening, Huey Lewis and the News will perform a live concert. The night will conclude with a fireworks show.

During the day’s activities, food trucks will be parked in the Leavey parking lot and a host of community organizations will have booths on Stanton and Bellomy Fields.

The initiative to host an event on campus came from the city about a year ago, according to Mary Smoker, senior assistant director of the Santa Clara Alumni Association.

“We are being very good neighbors with the City of Santa Clara,” Smoker said. “My job is just to make sure that all of their plans are respectful to our campus.”

Event planners expect a high turnout. According to Smoker, the city distributed 10,000 free tickets. 1,500 of these were made available exclusively to university community members and were gone within a day of release.

“We didn’t know that it was going to have this much popularity, and so when we sent out the student link, the tickets were gone in a few hours,” Smoker said.

Despite the popular demand, Smoker and other organizers are worried that some people may choose not to show up the day of the event since the tickets were provided at no cost. In the event that attendance is lower than expected, organizers are prepared to admit attendees on a walk-in basis.

The high profile nature of the event has led to some increased security measures.

According to Officer John Loretto, assistant director of Campus Safety Services, the university has contracted 130 extra security officers to be on duty that day.

“We’re going to have a tight perimeter around the place,” Loretto said.

As the Super Bowl is itself a matter of national security, the FBI, Homeland Security and local police will be working together in a command post leading up to the game.

But Loretto doesn’t expect that any serious threat will come to the university.

“We have no information to insinuate any sort of threats or things we should be concerned of other than the difficulties of running a large event,” he said. “It’s high profile, but we believe we will have all the appropriate people in place.”

Butch Coyne, director of SCU Presents, sits on both the Super Bowl Host Committee and the City of Santa Clara Super Community Committee. He is excited that the city chose to host the event on campus.

“This gives us an opportunity to showcase the university to the world,” he said. “We are going to have national and international media here.”

According to Coyne, this year’s Super Bowl is being marketed as a Bay Area event. As a result, many cities have been designated as “Super Communities,” in an effort to spread the celebratory mood across the area.

This is set to be the “most philanthropic” Super Bowl in the history of the NFL. The host committee will be giving back nearly $32 million to the Bay Area community, Coyne said.

“That’s one of the reasons the university wanted to get involved,” Coyne said. “It’s a part of our mission and we feel that giving back to the community...interests the university.”

The university also hopes that the event will be an opportunity to raise its profile.

“When they show a game for the 49ers, they show a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, which is 50 miles away,” Smoker said. “We’re down the street. Wouldn’t it be great if they showed a picture of the SCU campus or the Mission Church?”

Contact Nicolas Sonnenburg at nsonnenburg@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.