Fans from across US — mostly supporting Seahawks — flock to Levi’s Stadium for Super Bowl 60

SANTA CLARA — The price alone made sure that anybody fortunate enough to make it inside Levi’s Stadium on Sunday would make a lifetime memory. For some, it was the journey here from far and wide that made Super Bowl 60 special.

For others, like Ray and Amanda Conley, it was the company.

The Conleys don’t live nearby. They traveled from Oregon. They didn’t have any particular rooting interest. Both wore black Bengals jerseys from their seats in the stadium’s very top row.

“It’s just so special,” Ray Conley, 62, said, choking up and hugging his adult daughter. Amanda, 38, surprised her dad with a $12,000 Christmas present: Two tickets to Super Bowl 60.

It didn’t matter that the game featured the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” said Amanda Conley, who was raised to root for the Bengals by her dad, originally from Cincinnati. “I was sitting with my mom in the living room one day and I just said, let’s do it.”

The Conleys were among the 70,823 who witnessed the Seahawks’ dominating 29-13 Super Bowl victory.

As Pacific Northwest transplants, they were pulling for the Seahawks — and were in good company.

Levi’s Stadium, home of the 49ers, was flooded with a sea of blue and green. A blue “12th Man” flag flew behind an airplane overhead and below, at least two in every three fans wore Seahawks colors in their arch rivals’ home stadium.

“Seattle’s killing us,” observed Chris Montgomery, who traveled all day Saturday from Massachusetts to be here with his younger brother, Kyle. The Patriots fans, aged 34 and 29, won free tickets through a contest sponsored by DraftKings. Their seats, in Section 408, were “pretty high up. But it’s better than paying for it.”

When they won, back in September, the Patriots were still considered longshots to make the Super Bowl.

“It just turned out to be our team,” Chris Montgomery said. “Originally I was going to bring my wife, but she didn’t want to go, so brother was easily choice No. 2.”

Warren and Judy Schumacher got lucky, too. They have been married for 62 years, Seahawks season-ticket holders for the past two decades and were on the train home from the NFC Championship Game when they got an email.

“We won the lottery!” Warren Schumacher exclaimed.

In other words, they won the right to pay $3,000 per ticket to go to their first Super Bowl. “And at our age, we’d better hurry,” to get to one, Warren Schumacher said. “We checked with the kids and they said go ahead and spend our money.”

Judy Schumacher, 82, fell in love with football by watching black-and-white broadcasts with her dad when they got home from church. Her parents died when an Alaska Airlines flight crashed in 1971 on its way to Juneau, Alaska, and now cherishes the memory of her father watching the Seahawks every week.

“Whenever we do football, I just think about him,” Judy Schumacher said. “Like, good job, Dad.”

The Schumachers were watching from their couch 11 years ago, when the Seahawks’ last Super Bowl appearance — also against the Patriots — ended in heartbreak. Rather than hand off to bruising running back Marshawn Lynch at the goal line for a potential game-winning touchdown with seconds remaining in Super Bowl 49, Russell Wilson was intercepted by Malcolm Butler to clinch a 28-24 win for New England.

Shannon and Mylon Smith, from Lynden, Washington, near the Canadian border, were in the opposite end zone at the Arizona Cardinals’ stadium in the Phoenix area that night. “All of a sudden, we were like, Why are the Patriots fans cheering?” Mylon recalled.

“It was sickening,” interjected Shannon Smith, who stuck out among even the most festive fans with her blue sequined calf-high boots and a faux white fur vest that lit up blue and green when their friend, Brandon Tomlinson, pulled a remote control out of his pocket.

Clearly, they weren’t scared away from one bad Super Bowl experience.

“Because we’re gonna do it this time,” Shannon Smith said.

She was so confident that she bought airline tickets two-and-a-half months ago. The couple paid $5,000 per ticket to get into the game once Seattle claimed the NFC championship, though none for their kids. “Not at $5,000 a pop,” Shannon Smith joked. “They’re not worth that much.”

Tucker Gorman’s dad, back in Massachusetts, determined it was worth almost $2,000 for his son to experience his first Super Bowl. The Patriots fan had already been to three Super Bowls, so he offered to pay half of the $3,800 that it cost his son to take advantage of living in such close proximity to the setting for Super Bowl 60.

Gorman, a woodworker in Boulder Creek, hand-cut and painted a Patriots logo that he adorned to the back of a red topcoat, which he said belonged to his father-in-law. He went to the hardware store first thing Sunday morning to buy stickers that he used to spell, “On the doorstep of destiny,” below his homemade Patriots swag.

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him,” Gorman said. “I’m fired up. I just hope they don’t get steamrolled.”

As far as the Super Bowl experience, Gorman, a 49ers season-ticket holder, noted that the stadium lacked signs directing unfamiliar fans to their seats and, outside, there weren’t enough porta-potties.

Fans of all persuasions were treated to the same Chamber of Commerce weather the region has provided Super Bowl visitors all week. The sky was clear and the temperature was 67 degrees at kickoff.

“It was snowing and 2 degrees out when we left,” admired Chris Montgomery, the contest winner from Massachusetts, who layered his navy blue Drake Maye jersey over a thick sweatshirt. “I’m definitely overdressed. The sweatshirt is killing me.”

It was also about who wasn’t there.

A pair of Seahawks fans, siblings Kara Woolsey and Jason Seeley, could feel their father watching over them from the 400 level as Seattle went ahead 12-0 in the second half. The brother and sister flew in from separate cities in Canada to root on the Seahawks in memory of their father, Kevin. He was 62 when he died in an accidental fall after Seattle’s 41-6 win over the 49ers in the divisional round.

After Seattle’s Super Bowl win in 2013, he told his children he wouldn’t miss the next one.

“It was the last thing on his bucket list,” Seeley said. “I’m so emotional right now.”