LUTZ, Fla. — On Sunday, February 7, the biggest game in sports will come to Tampa. It’s the first Super Bowl ever to feature a hometown team in the Bucs, but it’s not the first one to be held here—it’s the fifth.

The first Tampa Super Bowl, in 1984, saw the then-Los Angeles Raiders beat the defending-champion Washington Redskins 38-9; since then, the city hosted Super Bowls in ‘91 (New York Giants over Buffalo Bills, 20-19), ‘01 (Baltimore Ravens over New York Giants, 34-7) and ‘09 (Pittsburgh Steelers over New York Cardinals, 27-23).

For Lutz surgeon Brett Armstrong, 36, the 2001 game is the one he remembers best, because he was there.

“We had season tickets for the Bucs that year, and my parents caught [Super Bowl tickets],” says Armstrong, who was born and raised in Odessa. “They were nice enough to give us tickets to the game.”

He remembers watching former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Trent Dilfer play for the Ravens.

“It was bittersweet,” he says. “That’s a name that’s long gone from here, but it was cool to see him play and win.”

When asked what stood out in his memories of the day, Armstrong says that it mostly all runs together in the overall excitement of attending a Super Bowl, but the halftime show stands out particularly in his mind.

“It was the best halftime show I think I’ve ever seen,” he says. “It was Aerosmith and Nelly and ‘N Sync, just dozens of stars. MTV was a co-sponsor, they gave everybody a gift back with a camera and told us all when to take pictures, it looked really cool.”

The ‘01 game wasn’t Armstrong’s only Tampa Bay Super Bowl experience; he says his parents took him to some of the pregame festivities in ‘95 (“I don’t remember much other than wandering around, but we still have a helmet from that one”), and as a broke college student he drove down from Florida State University in Tallahassee to witness some of the peripheral events in ‘09.

“I drove down just to go to the NFL Experience and go out to dinner with some friends,” he says. “We didn’t have the money, but we did it anyway.”

Despite the pandemic and the scaled-back attendance and schedule that come along with it, Armstrong is still glad there’s going to be a Super Bowl this year, and that Tampa is hosting it. (Los Angeles was originally considered as the location for Super Bowl LV, before swapping years with Tampa for 2022.) It will be not only a game to remember for its inclusion of the hometown team, but also hopefully something of an economic boost for the area, as well as shining the light of national exposure on the Tampa Bay area once again.

“I think it can still stimulate the economy,” says Armstrong. “And the other thing is, leading up to the game in 2009, every TV show was broadcasting from Tampa. They had segments where they would go out to eat, do all kinds of stuff and that stimulates the economy as well. It’s not just people watching the game, the whole week leading up to that is a big event. People realize, ‘hey, this is a fun place to be.’”