MIAMI — On Super Bowl Opening Night, hundreds of people — media, comedians and other stragglers — crowd around podiums and shout questions as players and coaches from the two teams playing in the big game.

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Chiefs coach Andy Reid is back in the hullaballoo for the first time since he led the Eagles there in 2004, and he had one of the bigger crowds around him on Monday night. Early in the hour-long Q&A, he pointed to a man in the crowd, to let him ask a question.

The man stood out.

It was Daniel McDowell. He asked a question. Reid laughed. Just as he hoped. This was a special moment for McDowell, and for his family.

He doesn’t actually know Reid, but he looked like him on Monday.

Well, at least, how Reid looked when he was 13.

McDowell, a Dallas radio host who dressed up as a clown at last year’s media opening night, dressed up exactly as Reid did when he was a 13-year-old football player in 1971, towering over other local Los Angeles youngsters, participating in a punt, pass and kick competition at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

In the viral video, Reid — wearing the No. 34, a Rams helmet and estimated to be 6-foot-2 and over 200 pounds — launched the ball down the field on a throw.

When McDowell, a radio host for KTCK radio station, saw it for the first time a few years ago, the idea was planted in the back of his head. Then his father passed away last year.

His father was an Eagles fan, but an even bigger Reid fan.

So, as McDowell — who likes to dress up as part of a bit for his radio station every year — got ready for another Super Bowl (he’s been going for almost 20 years) he considered what it would take to get noticed by Reid in the crowd, to ask him a question.

“I knew I could be a hot girl or if I could be Andy Reid,” McDowell said, “that would get me called on.”

So, he broached the idea of dressing up like Reid from that video to his mother.

She was all for it.

“He’s the one who introduced me to that video,” McDowell said on Monday. “My mom thought this would’ve been a great bit that he would love, so here we are.”

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McDowell asked for memories of the punt, pass and kick. Reid laughed, and said that he lost the competition, “which surprised me,” McDowell said.

Then, he asked a follow up.

“I asked if he used that as motivation to reach the big game on Sunday. He said ‘no.’ But I could read between the lines,” McDowell deadpanned. “I think it’s been gnawing at him all these years.”

In a moment of levity, McDowell found clarity — his father would’ve laughed, too.

“It was giant,” McDowell said. “It was my whole goal going in, and everything else has been gravy after that.”

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Zack Rosenblatt may be reached at zrosenblatt@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ZackBlatt. Find NJ.com on Facebook.