We were VIP guests of two organizations, NFL Owners and Visa.
Why Visa?
A Brief History. In 1997, Ryan joined as a Business Associate (BA) at McKinsey’s Pittsburgh office, and his first boss was Gunjan, and he was also the first BA she managed on projects! Now, in 2026, Ryan is CEO of Visa, with US Bank as one his key clients, and Gunjan as its CEO. See my Meditation on McKinsey and this 2025 Fortune article that mentions Ryan and Gunjan among others:
Visa and NFL. Visa is an official sponsor of the NFL, and so, at Super Bowls, has exclusive invite-only events for President/CEOs (and top executives) of its top clients to mingle with star NFL players and dine with team owners. Other CEOs invited included Tony (DoorDash), Scott (United Airlines), Darryl (Bank of Montreal) among (about a dozen) others. Of course, the spouses/partners of these CEOs are automatically invited to these events.
Why NFL Owners?
The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. The team plays its home games at U.S. Bank Stadium. Mark Wilf is the president and co-owner of the Minnesota Vikings.
Friday afternoon. Before the Visa evening reception, I spent the afternoon on Stanford campus, chatting with Al Roth on, yes, what else, Organ Transplantation (what’s new around the world, such as the upcoming Consensus Report of the Cairo meeting that took place recently, that he was putting the final edits on when I popped in to his office to, well, just shoot the breeze, and some possible modifications that might happen to the Declaration of Istanbul). Later it was good to walk around campus with my IIT-Madras classmate RV Guha on AI/LLM (about the plusses and minuses on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, and where he thinks this headed).
Friday night. The NFL weekend begins! Erin Andrews was moderated a Q&A with Matthew Stafford, who narrowly won the MVP title this year as we sipped Champaigne and partook in wine tasting.
Saturday lunch. Hung out with Candi Yano and her husband Eugene at ACRE Kitchen and Bar. Among other things, we discussed successful IEOR alums in industry, as Tony Xu (DoorDash) was a student in her class, and I was going to meet him at the game as he (also McKinsey alum) was also a Visa guest.
Saturday dinner. NFL Owners know how to throw a party! The dinner was hosted Jed York, owner of San Francisco 49ers. The welcome speech at City Hall was by SF Mayor, Daniel Lurie, and, within the first few minutes of getting there, I bumped into Nancy Pelosi! Her eyes brightened up when I said that I was a Professor at CMU – “It is a great school. It was among the first Universities I visited when I first joined Congress” – and we chatted a bit. Of course, we expected to see David Tepper (Carolina Panthers). The dinner – yes, they had a fully vegetarian multi-course meal for me – was from:
Quince is a restaurant in the Jackson Square neighborhood in San Francisco, California. In 2011, the James Beard Foundation awarded Michael Tusk the James Beard Foundation Award Best Chef – Pacific for his cuisine at Quince. In 2017, Quince became only the sixth restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area to be awarded three Michelin stars by the Michelin Guide.
Then, as dessert was being served, we had a set from Teddy Swims, and yes, he played my favorite:
“Lose Control” is a song by American singer-songwriter Teddy Swims, debuting at number 99 on Billboard Hot 100 and peaking at number one in March 2024.
At dinner, we were seated next to Patti Poppe (CEO of PG&E Corporation): she has a IEOR degree from Purdue! After dinner, chit-chatted with Shahid Khan (Owner of Jacksonville Jaguars) and David and Jed before calling a night. We skipped the after-hours concert by Chris Stapleton, as I know only one of his songs, If it hadn’t been for love.
Sunday breakfast pre-game with Jim Harbaugh. It was good to hear about his upbringing, rivalry with his brother, his coaching style – evidently Ted Lasso played by Jason Sudekis is loosely based on him – and his take on the game coming up. I asked him if this was going to be a super-boring 7-3 score game; he agreed that this was going to be mostly defensive plays, but would not be that low scoring: Seattle will get 20+ points.
Sunday Tailgate party before the game. Back with the Owners! Did I tell you already that they know how to throw a party? Jon Bon Jovi was there. As was Roger Federer. I was happy to chat with Tim Cook who was startled when I introduced myself– he did not expect to bump into a CMU Professor who teaches Ops at this party!
The Game. We were in a Suite reserved by Visa, with five other CEOs, including those of Marriott and United, but a real treat was to watch the entire game (and the Half-time show was much more enjoyable than I had expected as had not heard any Bad Bunny songs before!) with:
Tony Xu is an American billionaire businessman and the co-founder and CEO of DoorDash. He earned degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, in IEOR (and he remembered Candi from his time there, and he got a kick out of the fact that I had lunched with her just the day before!) and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
It was also great to meet up with one other IIT-Madras classmate, Kittu Kolluri (recall Chasing BLLN), who was at the game with his daughter and other friends.
Postscript. Ironically, everything about the Super Bowl LX Weekend was amazing (especially meeting successful IEOR graduates in Industry: Tony, Tim and Patti) except the game! This was the exact opposite of my previous Super Bowl trip, in 2009, in Tampa, when Steelers beat Cardinals in a nail-biting finish, while the other activities (such as Tailgate) were not particularly memorable. Perhaps, the next one that I go to – Third time is the charm! – will have both Fun Festivities and a Great Game.
