Long Beach has had a local connection to the Super Bowl ever since the first one was played in 1967.
Ahead of that game, which pitted the Green Bay Packers against the Kansas City Chiefs, the Chiefs stayed at the Edgewater Hotel near Second Street and Pacific Coast Highway. They also practiced at Veterans Memorial Stadium on the Long Beach Community College campus.
The hotel was eventually renamed the Seaport Marina and was demolished in 2017.
Pro football teams practicing in Long Beach was nothing new at the time, as sportswriter Mike Guardabascio detailed in his book “Football in Long Beach”.
The Los Angeles Rams used Cal State Long Beach’s Blair Field “as the site of their training camp for thirteen years in the late 1960s and ‘70s,” Guardabascio wrote.
Dennis Harrah, who later went on to Legends Sports Bar in Belmont Shore, played right guard for the Rams after the team drafted him with the 11th overall pick in 1975. That’s when Harrah’s love story with Long Beach began.
Although the team played its games at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, just southwest of downtown L.A., Harrah chose to live in Long Beach to be close to the practice facility at Blair Field, he said.
After practice, he and other teammates would often hang out at bars along Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach. Other teammates opted to make the daily drive to practice from other parts of Los Angeles, like the San Gabriel Valley.
Harrah has many fond memories of Long Beach and specifically Belmont Shore. It’s where he met his wife of 40 years and bought several homes.
But the bathrooms at Blair Field are not part of that nostalgia. The facilities were less than pristine, and back then, the toilets did not have any divider stalls, which made for a jarring experience for anyone walking into the bathroom, he said.
One day, Harrah went to relieve himself after practice and “all of a sudden I went around the corner and looked, and there’s Joe Namath sitting on the toilet.”
Namath, a Hall of Fame quarterback, spent 12 years with the New York Jets, but played his final season with the Los Angeles Rams in 1977.
Although the Rams eventually moved their training camp to Fullerton, Harrah remained in Long Beach. Originally from West Virginia, he said he “felt like [he] grew up in Belmont Shore.”
Harrah’s lone Super Bowl appearance in 1980 came a few months after he opened Legends. You can bet the still enormously popular sportsbar will be packed for the big game this Sunday, even with tickets just for standing room starting at $20.
Any local connection this year?
For the third straight year, Long Beach will have a local playing in the Super Bowl.
Alex Austin, son of former Long Beach City Councilmember Al Austin, is a Long Beach Poly grad who plays cornerback for the New England Patriots. He played in 12 games during the regular season and had 13 tackles.
For the two previous seasons, Long Beach was represented by JuJu Smith-Schuster – a wide receiver who appeared in Super Bowls LVIX and LVIII.
Smith-Schuster captured one Super Bowl ring from those two games.
A quarter of the Super Bowls (15 of 60) have featured a Poly alumnus, according to the562.org.
Willie McGinest remains the most decorated Jackrabbit. The linebacker has three Super Bowl rings out of four appearances with the Patriots after the team drafted him with the fourth overall pick in 1994.