Viva Rivera.

NFL Coach of the Year contender Ron Rivera and the Carolina Panthers are expected to have the support of the Hispanic community when they play the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 50 next Sunday.

Rivera is Hispanic, raised by a mother of Mexican descent and a father whose family still calls Puerto Rico home.

With Rivera now in his fifth year at the helm, the Panthers’ popularity has become so widespread in the Hispanic community they now employ their own broadcast team to call their games in Spanish.

Rivera knows he isn’t the first Hispanic to coach in a Super Bowl — Tom Flores won two championships with the Oakland Raiders — but jokes he still feels like a “trail blazer.”

“For the most part it’s usually baseball and soccer [that are popular] there,” Rivera told the Associated Press. “But football is trying to become a world sport … So it’s neat to see that kind of support, and because of my parents’ heritage, there is a tremendous amount of pride.”

Randall Alexander Varnum, 29, from Mexico City, will be tuning in to watch the Super Bowl to root on Carolina. He’s been a fan of the Panthers his entire life. He even lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, for a while and attended some games.

“The fact they have Ron Rivera could be a factor for some fans to pay attention to the game, even if they’re not fans of either team,” Varnum said.

Esteban Rivera, 30, the sports editor for GFR Media in Puerto Rico, said there hasn’t been overwhelming support for the Panthers yet, but expects that could change once more people learn of Rivera’s heritage.

“Puerto Ricans usually support their own in sports, so Ron Rivera and the Panthers will be the favorites on the island,” he said.

Rivera was raised in a military family, a self-described Army brat. His parents met at a USO dance, the Rivera family moved from one military base to another, with stops in Maryland, Washington, Panama and Germany. But home base for the Riveras was always Fort Ord, California, a little over an hour’s drive from Santa Clara, the Super Bowl site.

“It is a homecoming of sorts,” Rivera said.

Rivera is known in Carolina as a player’s coach. He regularly walks through the locker room, where he feels most at home, having played nine seasons as a linebacker with the Bears, part of the Monsters of the Midway who ran roughshod over the NFL for the 1985 championship.

Pro Bowl tight end Greg Olsen said if players have concerns about the intensity of practice, play call suggestions or even personal problems, Rivera’s door is always open — and he’s always receptive.

“In this league everyone just assumes that in order to be a football coach that you have to be standoffish, secretive and a little bit of a (jerk) — but you don’t,” Olsen said. “You can have the ear of the entire organization by the way you go about your business and the way you treat people. And Ron is the perfect example of that.”

Olsen said because Rivera “treats guys like men,” he’s earned the respect of the locker room.

It helps too that Rivera has played the game and can relate to what players are feeling.

“He has high expectations, and his standards are through the roof,” Olsen said. “But guys take a lot of pride in upholding those standards because they don’t want to disappoint him.”

Rivera’s ability to relate to people is the result of his upbringing.

In moving from city to city, Rivera had to be outgoing to make new friends. He learned that skill through sports; he also dabbled in baseball, golf and tennis.

He became an All-America at California and was the Bears’ second-round draft pick in 1984. Cerebral and hard-working, it was no surprise Rivera ventured into coaching.

Bears coach Dave Wannstedt offered him an unpaid internship in 1997, and Rivera accepted. He quickly moved up the ranks, becoming defensive coordinator in 2004. Rivera reached the Super Bowl two years later, a loss to Indianapolis’ Peyton Manning — the same quarterback, of course, the Panthers (17-1) face on Sunday.

Rivera was passed over for nine head coaching positions before landing with the Panthers in 2011. After a slow start, he’s won three straight NFC South championships and is 37-15-1 during that span.

Every week during team meetings, the 56-year-old Rivera chooses one pivotal play from the previous week’s game and plays the Spanish broadcast version for his players. Most don’t have a clue what the broadcasters are screaming about, but they holler in delight upon hearing the call.

If the Panthers win the Super Bowl, Rivera is hoping it will generate even more interest in football within the Hispanic community, and maybe even convince some to play — or even coach.

“I tell people you can do anything you want,” Rivera said. “It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from.”

For the Conversation

Super Bowl day. How are Latinos showing for

A golf cart passes outside the stadium in preparation for Super Bowl XLIX at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. LARRY W. SMITH / EPA

I first learned of American football in 1973, when I was about 4 years old and my dad had come back from some IBM conference in Dallas with a reddish-brown official NFL game ball, Calvin Hill edition. I remember it vividly: my rather loud Papi in his sharp navy blue ’70s executive suit giving me this humongous football (everything looks gigantic when you’re 4) in the backyard of my abuelos’ home in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico.

I had no idea what Papi had given me. What was it? And who was Calvin Hill? I knew about the great baseball player Roberto Clemente, who died months before. I knew about Cepeda and Marichal and the Alou brothers, but Calvin Hill?

“He plays for the Dallas Cowboys, America’s Team,” my dad told me.

I shrugged and grabbed the football with both my hands. I could barely hold it.

Three days later, my Dad turned on the television in the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday. A Sunday! My abuela let him do it because he was the youngest of four children, and still in his 20s.

“You have to see these Cowboys,” Papi said. “I was at the stadium two weeks before.”

And that’s how it began.

Texas Stadium. A team with stars on its helmets and stars on the field. Roger Staubach. Calvin Hill. Bob Hayes. A stoic coach named Tom Landry. The Cowboys won easily, 31-10, over the Philadelphia Eagles. We became Cowboy fans in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. Even my abuela.

The N.F.L is trying to gain more Latino football fans. But in 1973 in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, even my abuela was rooting for the Cowboys.

A few years later, when I was a middle schooler living in El Bronx, Nueva York, my mom and stepdad gave me a real-life Cowboys helmet, shoulder pads and a Staubach jersey for my 12th birthday. During that time, sandlot football — you know, when neighborhood kids would just go out and play — was all the rage where I lived.

Everyone had their uniform: Cowboys, Raiders, Steelers, Jets, Giants, Dolphins — one kid even had Buccaneers gear. We would play until it got dark. In the rain. In the snow. Then we would run to the local luncheonette to eat and revel in our feats.

It was pure joy.

Eventually, I took a chance at organized football, trying out for my freshman high school team. At the time, I wanted to be a wide receiver like Chris Collinsworth, the Cincinnati Bengal who was having a monster year. All my dreams of being the boricua Collinsworth dashed away the moment I got hit going after a football.

My football career was over. It had never begun.

To this day, as the NFL becomes the most popular (and most hated?) sports league in the United States, I still follow the game. Not with the same joy as before now nor with the same passion as real fútbol, but it hasn’t hurt that I live just 30 minutes from Gillette Stadium, where Tom Brady and Company have spoiled Bostonians for years. Even as the rest of the country calls the New England Patriots cheaters, I guarantee every other fan of every other team would take Brady and Bill Belichick in a heartbeat.

U.S. Latinos have become a “target audience” for the N.F.L., but we have been here all the time.

My stories from Guaynabo and The Bronx? Similar ones played out in the homes of my friends growing up, whether it was in Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago or DC.

It seems a bit bizarre to me that we hear more and more about “fútbol norteamericano” when in fact, the children of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s already knew about greats such as Joe Kapp (“The Toughest Chicano”) Tom Flores, Jim Plunkett, Antony Muñoz and Ron Rivera. We would also joke around whenever the placekicker would come out, too. They always seemed to be Latin American.

But here we are. The NFL is going Latino on us, whether by hyping Victor Cruz’s tropical moves or embracing new fans through an exclusive Spanish-language Super Bowl broadcast.

Fact remains, we have always been here, and a lot of us still remember those simpler times. Now there is the NFL and El Gran Tazón. But as for me, I don’t need the flash to remind me of that first day, 42 years ago, when I started my love-hate relationship with this country’s most popular sport.

Before Carolina Panthers Coach Ron Rivera guided his team to Super Bowl 50, there was Tom Flores, the first Latino quarterback and first Latino coach of Super Bowl champions, achievements some say deserve greater recognition.

In 1960, while playing for the American Football League’s Oakland Raiders in their inaugural year, Flores became the first-ever Latino starting quarterback in professional football. He holds a passing record for the AFL.

Although he was not a top player, during 11 years coaching the Raiders in Oakland and in Los Angeles, Flores became the first Latino - and first person of color - to guide a team to the Super Bowl title. Under his direction, his team won Super Bowl XV and XVIII.

Flores and former Chicago Bears Coach Mike Ditka are the only two people in NFL history to win the Super Bowl as a player (backup quarterback for the 1970 Kansas City Chiefs), assistant coach (1976 Oakland Raiders) and as coach (Oakland Raiders, 1981 and Los Angeles Raiders, 1984). He also went on to be a general manager of the Seattle Seahawks.

Flores’ multiple Super Bowl wins and “stand-out” statistics make him a worthy candidate for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, said sports historian Mario Longoria who has researched Flores’ career and advocates for the larger honor for him in pro football.

“But he gets ignored,” said Longoria, author of Athletes Remembered: Mexicano/Latino Professional Football Players, 1929-1970. “He created a space for Latinos in American football, and the history of football is incomplete without his story.”

Now with Rivera in the spotlight, there’s hope that the Latino who preceded him in coaching a team in the Super Bowl and blazed a trail for Latinos on the field will perhaps finally join the NFL elite in the Canton, Ohio museum.

Now 78, Flores has been nominated seven times for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but his name has not made it through the semi-final deliberations.

“Since the Great Depression, Mexican Americans have always had this stigma attached,” said Longoria, a retired professor documenting sports history at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “I followed the voting and nominations for the (Pro Football) Hall of Fame and I am now convinced the selection process is flawed.”

He created a space for Latinos in American football, and the history of football is incomplete without his story.”

Pro Football Hall of Fame Executive Vice President Joe Horrigan asked Longoria to write the Hispanic history on the Hall of Fame’s website to emphasize diversity. Longoria hoped sharing these stories would inspire the Hall of Fame to induct Flores.

“Selectors” for the Pro Football Hall of Fame are all members of the media and come from each of the geographical regions in football. According to Longoria, out of the 46 people who decide the inductees to the Hall of Fame, just one is Hispanic.

The selectors have known about Flores’ accomplishments, Horrigan said. The Hall of Fame rewards players, coaches and contributors (administrators) independently. Flores can only be inducted for one of his achievements, Horrigan said.

“As a coach he is enormously qualified and remains a candidate,” Horrigan said. “People have suggested before that he has been overlooked by our selectors. If there was a category for ‘all of the above,’ he would be in already,”

Brent Wilkes, the executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said his organization has pushed the Pro Football Hall of Fame to induct Flores. Latinos in the NFL, compared to Major League Baseball, do not get the same recognition for their contributions, Wilkes said. This is partly because there are many more Hispanics and Latinos in professional baseball.

“You would think (the) NFL would be eager to lift up and promote the fact that there has been someone groundbreaking like Flores,” Wilkes said. “There are so few Latino standouts in the NFL to begin with, and I think contributions by people like Tom Flores are undervalued.”

The Milwaukee Bucks have formed a new partnership with Bustos Media that will expand the NBA team’s Spanish-language coverage in the market. Three upcoming games will air on Regional Mexican “La Gran D” WDDW.

The team says the broadcasts on “La Gran D” WDDW are “the cornerstone” of a new partnership. Good Karma Broadcasting’s “ESPN Deportes 1510 AM” WRRD will continue to carry some Bucks games in Spanish but its daytime only signal prevents it from airing night games.

The three upcoming games that will air on WDDW are on Feb. 22 vs. the L.A. Lakers, March 9 vs. Miami and April 5 vs. Cleveland. Longtime Milwaukee broadcaster Andy Olivares will call the games.

The Bucks March 6 game vs. Oklahoma City will air on WRRD with Jamie Cano calling the action. Good Karma principal Craig Karmazin is an investor in the Bucks.

“As this innovative new ownership group and management team return this proud franchise to prominence, they also are changing the landscape of Greater Milwaukee and will make a huge impact on the community,” John Bustos, managing partner of WDDW, said in a release. “We look forward to working with them to bring that excitement to the fast-growing Hispanic community that we serve so well.”