National Football League

Packers fan in Visa ad to miss 1st Super Bowl

Published Feb. 6, 2011 12:40 a.m. ET

foxsports

The streak is over: One of the four men featured in a national commercial for never missing a Super Bowl game will not be at Sunday's showdown between Pittsburgh and Green Bay.

Family members said Saturday that 79-year-old Robert Cook of Brown Deer, Wis., is hospitalized and had sent his two daughters to Arlington, Texas, instead.

Cook's wife, Sarah, told The Associated Press her husband became very weak on Thursday.

''We were packed and ready to go,'' she said.

Cook said her husband is very depressed; the streak is over, but he also won't be able to watch his beloved Packers in the big game.

''To have the Packers go to the Super Bowl, we were just over the moon about it,'' Sarah Cook said.

Cook, New England Patriots fan Donald Crisman, San Francisco 49ers fan Larry Jacobson and Pittsburgh Steelers' fan Thomas Henschel have been to every Super Bowl since 1967 and created the ''Never Missed a Super Bowl Club.''

The four gained recognition in a recent Visa Inc. credit card commercial that celebrated the men's passion for football and their perfect attendance record. Cook's daughters have enlarged a photo of their dad and attached it to a stick so they could hold it up at the game.