Scott Fowler: Drake Maye's NC family is trying to make Super Bowl plans. It isn't easy.

Scott Fowler, The Charlotte Observer on Jan 31, 2026

Published in Football

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Drake Maye has become a Super Bowl quarterback at age 23, and there’s no way anybody in his immediate family is going to miss the moment.

At least that’s the plan.

Mark Maye, father to Drake and his three older brothers, said Wednesday in a telephone interview that the family is all planning on being there Feb. 8 when Drake’s New England Patriots face the Seattle Seahawks in the 60th Super Bowl in Santa Clara, Calif.

“Like everybody, I’m surprised they made the Super Bowl,” Mark Maye said of the Patriots, who went 4-13 in 2024. “Now I thought they’d be better than what people were expecting. I’m a little more optimistic — maybe a little biased — about all of my kids’ teams and always have been. Honestly, it wouldn’t have surprised me for them to make the playoffs. But to make the Super Bowl? That’s pretty tough to do.”

Now that it’s here, though, the brothers, Mark and his wife Aimee all plan to go. The only real wild card in the bunch?

That would be Luke Maye, the oldest brother of the four. He is a former basketball star and 2017 national champion at UNC who currently lives in Japan and plays pro basketball there. Getting back and forth from Japan isn’t simple, and Luke couldn’t make it for last week’s AFC championship game in Denver.

Luke plans to arrive just in time for the Super Bowl, however.

“He’s going to hopefully get in Sunday morning,” Maye said, referring to the morning of the Super Bowl, “and then leave Monday morning. That’s the latest that we’ve heard, anyway.”

The rest of the Mayes will get there 1 to 3 days beforehand to watch their baby brother, including brothers Cole and Beau (now the head basketball coach at Hough High in Cornelius). Ann Michael Maye, Drake’s wife, who has become something of a social media star herself over the past few months, will be traveling separately with other players’ wives from the New England area.

Tickets, at least, won’t be an issue, as they were the only other time Mark and Drake Maye attended a Super Bowl. That was exactly 10 years ago. Drake was a 13-year-old middle-schooler at Bailey Middle in Cornelius, just outside Charlotte. He was a very big supporter of both star quarterback Cam Newton and the 2015 Carolina Panthers.

The Panthers started that season 14-0, and headed into the Super Bowl 17-1.

“We are obviously big Panthers fans,” said Mark Maye, who grew up in Charlotte and played quarterback at UNC in the 1980s before a severe shoulder injury wrecked his chance at going pro. “So Drake said, ‘Dad, hey, if they go to the Super Bowl, can we go?’ Probably like a lot of dads, I said, ‘If the Panthers make the Super Bowl, we’re going.’ ”

The problem was getting in. The Mayes — just Mark and Drake this time, with none of the three older brothers in tow — went to California without any tickets. They scrounged some up, but had to arrange a somewhat iffy meeting, pay a whole lot of money and hope for the best.

“We had to go meet some guy somewhere,” Maye said. “And we were just hoping that the tickets were real.”

They were. Mark and Drake enjoyed the run-up to the game — attending both a Golden State Warriors game and the NFL Experience fan event. They sat high in the end zone for the game itself, watching the Panthers flounder and lose, 24-10, to Denver and its fierce defense.

Now the Mayes will hope for a better family experience, 10 years later and inside the very same stadium. “Amazing how that worked out,” Maye said.

Mark and Aimee Maye also attended the AFC championship game in Denver on Sunday. Maye said it was “probably the loudest stadium I’ve ever been in.”

Drake Maye threw for a paltry 86 yards in blizzard-like conditions, but he ran for New England’s only touchdown and ran again for a game-clinching first down in the Patriots’ 10-7 win.

“They’re fortunate,” Maye said of the Patriots. “That one wasn’t pretty Sunday. All of the boys and I used to say, ‘We don’t care if we win 3-2 or 50-49.’ Well, that one was almost 3-2.”

Doesn’t matter. Drake Maye is going back to the same stadium for a different Super Bowl. And one way or another, he’ll be bringing a lot of North Carolina with him.