Super Bowl LVI: the expected duel between Rams and Bengals 1:31
(CNN Spanish) -
The 2022 Super Bowl will be played this Sunday, February 13.
Like every year in the NFL, the expectation is great: the Los Angeles Rams will try to win the Vince Lombardi trophy playing at home (SoFi Stadium), while the Cincinnati Bengals go for the maximum feat after beating the favorites Kansas City Chiefs in the conference championship.
Despite the fact that in these times of pandemic there has been a decrease in the Super Bowl audience, there are still millions of people who watch this event.
According to CBS, the audience for last year's game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Chiefs was 96.4 million on television and streaming platforms in the United States.
Super Bowl 2022: when is it, which stadium will it be played in, where to buy tickets and more
And it's not just the US that has a huge fan base.
Outside of the United States, the NFL has a great fan base.
In Mexico alone, it was estimated that in 2016 there were around 22 million fans of this league, making American football the second most popular sport in the country after soccer.
Statista, with data from the Global Web Index analysis firm, indicated in 2015 that other Latin countries with millions of NFL fans were Brazil and Argentina.
Precisely, Latin America has been represented in the NFL by a wide range of Latino players and this has increased the interest of the sport in these countries.
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Below, we present some of the most important in terms of trophies achieved in the highest US football league.
Latino players with championships in the NFL
Steve VanBuren
He is originally from Honduras, with a date of birth in December 1920.
The Hall of Fame points out that Van Buren was born in La Ceiba, but the authors of
Latinos in American Football
interviewed him for his book and pointed out that he was actually in Tela and shortly after his family moved to La Ceiba.
Van Buren added that both his mother and father were Americans, but, being born in Honduras, he is recognized as Latino by birth.
He lived in Honduras until he was 7 years old;
His parents died and he was sent to live with his grandparents in New Orleans.
He was drafted by the Eagles in 1994. He played in 83 games in 8 seasons and rushed for over 5,000 yards.
He won the 1948 and 1949 NFL championships with the Eagles.
In the 1949 game against the Chicago Cardinals, which went 7-0, Van Buren had that only touchdown on the scoreboard.
He was enshrined in the Hall of Fame on September 12, 1965.
Tom Fears
He was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in December 1922.
Latinos in American Football
mentions that Fears' father was American and his mother was Mexican.
The Fears family lived in a small mining town in Mexico (the father was a mining engineer), but by 1930 they moved to Los Angeles.
He was originally drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles as a defensive end, but the Rams realized he had better function at receiver, according to the Hall of Famer.
He won the NFL championship in 1951 (before the Super Bowl era) thanks to a great 60-yard run in the final seconds of the game.
On August 8, 1970, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
ted hendricks
He was born in Guatemala City, the capital of Guatemala, in 1947.
According to the book
Latinos in American Football
, written by Mario Longoria and Jorge Iber, it mentions that Hendricks' parents met in Guatemala at the time of World War II.
His father, originally from Texas, worked for Pan Am Airlines, and his mother was Guatemalan.
They raised a family and lived in Miami, but they often went on vacation to Guatemala.
Hendricks was selected in the 1969 NFL draft by the then-Baltimore Colts, according to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
He played 15 seasons as a linebacker for a total of 215 games, was selected to the Pro Bowl 8 times and won four Super Bowls: V with the Colts;
and the XI, XV, XVIII with the Raiders.
He was enshrined in the Hall of Fame on August 4, 1990.
Efren Herrera
He was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1951.
According to
Latinos in American Football
, he lived on Mexican soil until his family moved to Southern California when he was 15 years old.
In high school, Herrera played soccer, basketball and even wrestled, but a coach saw him kicking a basketball, called him to try out for football, and won a scholarship to UCLA even though he didn't know much about the sport.
From there, Herrera made history as the first Mexican to win a Super Bowl, which he did at the kicker position.
His victory was in SB XII with the Dallas Cowboys, who won 27-10 against the Denver Broncos.
The Cowboys of that Super Bowl had figures like Roger Staubach, Tony Dorsett, Randy White, Ed Jones and Tom Landry as coach.
He played for the Lions, Cowboys, Seahawks, Bills and Raiders, according to
Latinos in American Football
.
He made 116 field goals from a total of 171 attempts;
In addition, he hit 256 extra points and even caught two passes for a total of 29 yards during his time with the Seahawks.
Raul Allegre
He was born in Torreon, Mexico, in 1959.
Allegre was originally a soccer player.
In 1977, he went on an exchange to the United States and received a football scholarship to study at the University of Montana, where he would spend two years before transferring to the University of Texas at Austin, according to the institution's website.
He was drafted by the Cowboys in 1983 as a free agent, who then traded him to the Colts before the season began.
From 1986 to 1990, he played for the New York Giants, where he was part of the squads that won Super Bowl XXI and XV.
In his career, Allegre had 186 field goal attempts, with a shooting percentage of 73.66, according to the NFL.
Martin Grammar
He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in November 1975.
He studied and played football at Kansas State University, where he holds the record for being the most decorated kicker in the institution's history.
During his 10-year NFL career, Kansas State University notes, he was selected to the Pro Bowl in 2000 and won Super Bowl XXXVII with Tampa Bay.
The Super Bowl that Gramática won with Tampa in 2003 was the first for the franchise.
It took 18 years for the team, led by now-retired Tom Brady, to win another Super Bowl.
In the following video, Gramática talks to CNN en Español about what was happening in Tampa before the SB LV that Brady and company beat the Chiefs.
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