This year, the Super Bowl will take place Sunday in Glendale, Arizona, where the Philadelphia Eagles will face off against the Kansas City Chiefs. For those still wondering who to root for this weekend, fans of Diana, Princess of Wales, will likely root for the Eagles, thanks to a famous photo where she’s wearing a Philadelphia Eagles varsity jacket.
In 1982, the late Philadelphia Eagles statistician Jack Edelstein met Diana at the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco. During the reception, the two began speaking, and the topic of American football came up.
“She thought football was like soccer,” Edelstein told the “Philadelphia Daily News” after Diana’s death in 1997. “She asked, ‘What are your colors?’ I said, ‘Green and silver.’ She said, ‘Those are my favorite colors.’“
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Edelstein then promised to send Diana some T-shirts. At the time, the Philadelphia Eagles were owned by Leonard Tose, who had the idea of sending her a more elevated gift: a custom-made Eagles varsity jacket.
Diana would later be seen in the jacket several times. She was famously photographed wearing the jacket dropping her son, Prince Harry, off at London Wetherby’s Prep School in 1991, accompanied by her eldest son, Prince William.
Notably, she was also featured wearing the jacket on a 1994 cover of “People” magazine. To this day, photos of the late Princess of Wales are featured in sports bars across Philadelphia, where patrons will root for their home team during this weekend’s Super Bowl.
Despite her love for the jacket, it has been said by those who knew her that it was unlikely Diana was ever tuning in to football Sunday.
“She wears these things because they create a look,” Andrew Morton, the British royal biographer who covered Princess Diana for 15 years and wrote the 1992 biography, “Diana: Her True Story,” told “Daily News” in 1991. “She knows very little about English sports, let alone American teams.”