The Super Bowl Scammer: Dion Rich Is the Godfather of Gatecrashing
It just kind of happened. At least, that’s how Bill Swank remembers it. He had gotten a call from Dion Rich the night before, to meet him along the San Diego piers. Swank figured they were getting lunch. But Rich shows up and they start walking and talking and soon they’re headed onboard the USS Midway.
Swank thought nothing of it.
There’s Rich, chatting people up, with Swank figuring he’s seen someone he knows or used to know. But Rich waves him over and now they’re walking through the decommissioned ship’s museum, and it’s quiet and empty, except for a small gathering of a few dozen people. There’s a podium and balloons and a lot of military-ish folks milling about, excited about something. There’s a banner on the wall and when Swank started reading it, he realized what was going on:
Dion Rich and Bill Swank were crashing a birthday party for a 99-year-old man.
John Finn, the Pearl Harbor hero, was being honored at a party attended by only Medal of Honor recipients and local dignitaries. And Rich and Swank.
“This was an invitation-only party,” Swank recalls, laughing. “This was something. Finn was, at the time, the oldest living recipient of the Medal of Honor and Dion wanted a picture with him. He actually already had a picture with him, but it was a lousy one, so Dion went down there just to get another one. We had gotten there early enough, that when people started showing up, we didn’t leave. Everyone thought we belonged there.”
Hang around Dion Rich long enough and you’re sure to have a story (or several) like Swank’s. Parties at the Playboy Mansion. The Academy Awards. The Olympics. He is the Godfather of the Gatecrash. The Sultan of the Sneak-In. He has been photographed next to Jack Nicholson and Tiger Woods and Bill Clinton. But his biggest claim to fame?
Crashing Super Bowls.
And not just to sit, like some schlub in Section 318 of the nosebleeds. No, when Dion Rich goes to a Super Bowl, he goes to be seen.
“Never, ever in my life, did I think I would be a famous gatecrasher,” Rich says from his home in the San Diego area. “When I was on the podium after Super Bowl I with Pete Rozelle, Vince Lombardi and Bart Starr, I had no idea I would become famous. I just wanted to get my picture taken.”
“Well, it all begins with a bar I used to own. A lot of good-looking chicks used to hang out there.”
This was the ’60s, back when the Chargers had just moved south from Los Angeles to San Diego. Rich was a jack-of-all-trades: he was a ticket-broker, professional schmoozer, general man-about-town. But he also happened to own a number of bars in the city, including one right near where the Chargers practiced. And as the team gained a foothold, his bar became the unofficial watering hole for players, coaches and team personnel.
When opposing teams came to San Diego, they were directed to Rich’s bar. The booze was free, the company was better and the women were likely topless. He began riding to Chargers games with friends on the team, or coaches – never paying to enter and always watching from the sideline. And he quickly learned how things worked.
“I got to know a lot of the Kansas City players real well,” Rich recalls. “So when they made the first World Championship Game and I found out where they were staying in L.A., I got up early, found where the buses were going to park and got there just ahead of them. When they got off the bus, I brought a jacket a Chiefs player had already given me and walked off the bus with them and into the locker room.”
Just like that, he was in.
He spent the first half on the Chiefs’ sideline, evaluating which side to finish the game on. Since he was already in, Rich’s goal was to get on television. Once the Green Bay Packers put up 21 unanswered points in the second half, Rich ditched the Chiefs jacket and stealthily shifted to the winning locker room to ride the victory wave.
Rozelle, the NFL‘s commissioner, was on a small podium in front of TV cameras, waiting to award the championship trophy to Vince Lombardi and quarterback Bart Starr. But Starr stepped off the stage for another interview and Rich saw his opening – he boldly stepped right up behind Lombardi and the legend of the gatecrasher began.
“That was how I got started,” he says. “I was determined to get to every Super Bowl.”