Giles Pellerin, Date of Birth, Date of Death
TweetGiles Pellerin
American businessman and USC football "superfan"
Date of Birth: 23-Dec-1906
Date of Death: 21-Nov-1998
Profession: businessperson
Zodiac Sign: Capricorn 
About Giles Pellerin
- Giles L.
- (Bud) Pellerin (December 23, 1906 – November 21, 1998), nicknamed the Superfan or Super Fan, was an American telephone company executive, USC alumnus, and a fan of the University of Southern California Trojans (USC) college football team, notable for having attended 797 consecutive USC football games over a period of 73 years until his death at age 91.
- This record was made all the more remarkable by the fact that Pellerin hated flying and, whenever possible, drove or rode the train or bus to every game he attended.
- He was inducted into the USC Athletic Hall of Fame in 1995. Pellerin's streak began in 1925, while he was still a student at USC (he graduated in 1930).
- During his streak he attended USC games in 75 stadiums in over 50 cities.
- Until his death, he had watched every game played in USC's major football rivalries, including 68 games with UCLA and 69 games with Notre Dame.
- He had seen the introduction of USC icons such as Traveler in 1927 and Tommy Trojan in 1930.
- He had witnessed all but one of USC's bowl games, including the regular-season Mirage Bowl in Tokyo, Japan in 1985.
- During his streak USC went 532-225-40, winning nine national championships, and played under ten different head coaches. Pellerin never played football himself.
- A resident of the Pasadena area for his entire life, he attended his first USC football game while still a student at Huntington Park High School, going to the 1923 Rose Bowl Game in which USC defeated Penn State.
- It was USC's first appearance in the Rose Bowl, and Pellerin would go on to see the Trojans' next 27 appearances as well.
- In his private life, Pellerin married and became a successful executive with Pacific Telephone Company, completing his career in the 1960s as director of a computerized billing office in Orange, California, with a staff of 450 female and 7 male employees.
- He delayed his own 1935 honeymoon by eight months in order to combine it with a USC football road game (against the University of Hawaii in Honolulu), and donated over US$1.3 million to USC to endow four athletic scholarships: three for football and one for swimming.
- Pellerin claimed to have traveled over 650,000 miles and spent $85,000 to attend the games in his streak.
- In 1949, he walked out of a hospital just five days after an appendectomy in order to attend a home game, telling nurses that he was going for a walk. USC embraced Pellerin and began including his story in their annual football media guide.
- By the 1990s he had become a subject for many sports journalists, including stories in USA Today and Sports Illustrated and on the ABC Network.
- In 1995, Pellerin was enshrined in the USC Athletic Hall of Fame as part of the second class of inductees.
- He won the first annual Sears Diehard Fan Award as "America's NCAA Division I Diehard College Sports Fan" in 1996.
Read more at Wikipedia