MINNEAPOLIS — Jason Crespin is a special education teacher, not a Minnesota Super Bowl host. But he might have had the central message from Minnesotans to all of those thousands of visitors from warmer locales preparing for a few days of arctic activities.

It’s the same message he preaches to the kids in his classroom at Hidden Valley Elementary School in Savage.

“I always tell them, ‘You may not be able to overcome all of your fears, but don’t let all of your fears overcome you,'” Crespin said.

Crespin and his wife, Heather, were preparing to ride the zip line across the Mississippi River, which is maybe the epitome of the Super Bowl festivities lined up for football fans from Boston, Philadelphia and the rest of the nation and world.

This isn’t a typical Super Bowl — an event traditionally hosted by warm-weather cities in Southern California, Florida, Texas and Louisiana. Minnesota tourism officials, adopting a “Bold North” theme, decided to embrace the cold like a polar bear embracing a beluga whale.

The focal point of the lead-up to the game is “Super Bowl Live,” held on the open-air Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis. Visitors can watch ice sculptors sculpt, can rent skates for a glide around an outdoor rink, can watch Nordic skiers compete on the Birkebeiner Bridge, and can watch snowmobile stunt-riders soar through the air.

It’s the sort of stuff seen often at wintertime festivals in the Upper Midwest, just more concentrated this time in a six-block stretch of urban street. What’s strange is the other stuff — the stuff that normal people only do during the pleasant times of the year: drinking beer and wine as they stroll down the mall, standing in line to listen to live music on an open-air stage, taking hayride-style tours around downtown, sampling the fare of food trucks, posing for selfies in front of local landmarks.

“I think they’ve done a really good job of saying, ‘Hey, we’re friendly people, we’ve got a lot going on,” said North Mankatoan Pam Krahmer, who volunteered on Nicollet Mall this week.

So, yes, there’s a lot going on. But it’s going on in a place where the cold is bone-chilling.

Based on the amount of Vikings gear, most of the visitors to Super Bowl events are Minnesotans. On Wednesday and Thursday, even the green-and-gold clad Wisconsinites outnumbered those in Eagles and Patriots attire. The numbers from New England and the Philadelphia area swelled Thursday and Friday, many of them talking about the weather as they escaped to the downtown skyways and the Mall of America.

Buoyed by the success of their football teams, their weather complaints were mostly good-natured.

“I haven’t run into any crabby people at all,” said Kathy Tratar of Centerville, another of the 10,000 “Crew 52” volunteers serving as good-will ambassadors. “Everybody’s been happy and excited.”

Along with the downtown activities, Super Bowl visitors were offered ice-fishing outings, sled-dog rides and a taste of St. Paul’s Winter Carnival with its Ice Palace constructed of 5,000 blocks of Green Lake ice.

Brian Groff of Hershey, Pennsylvania, said he’s not afraid of the cold. It was only about 13 degrees warmer there than in Minneapolis Friday afternoon. Groff just isn’t convinced that it makes sense to spend a lot of time outside when it’s freezing cold.

“It’s gotta be pretty good for me to stay outside in 8-degrees,” he said, sounding skeptical about the attractiveness of the slate of events downtown.

His wife, Jodi, was inclined to overrule Brian — at least for a little while.

“We’ll check it out tomorrow and see,” she said.

There’s good reason the Groffs didn’t have a detailed itinerary.

“Four days ago, she asked me to go,” Brian said, adding that he wasn’t too disappointed that the Eagles’ first Super Bowl in 13 years happened to be in Minneapolis rather than Miami or New Orleans. “… It didn’t matter. Never been here.”

Sean and Debbie Cotter of Norwood, Massachusetts, were even less inclined to spend time ice fishing or watching Nordic skiing. There was only one sport on their mind.

“For me, it’s definitely a game trip,” Sean said.

On Saturday, the Cotters will be in the warm confines of a bar on the campus of the University of Minnesota for a rally with other Patriots fans featuring Boston sports-talk radio hosts “Hardy and Big Jim Murray.” Next up would be the NFL Experience, a football-obsessed theme park filling the climate-controlled Minneapolis Convention Center.

On Sunday, their pre-game festivities will take place at a private party for Patriots and Eagles fans at a bar adjacent to U.S. Bank Stadium. Then to the indoor stadium for the game itself … .

The fans from Hershey and Norwood, which were both at 22 degrees Friday afternoon, were experiencing only a minor deterioration in temperatures. Ricky Verdugo of Orange County, California was experiencing a 70-degree plunge when he flew to Minnesota Friday, but he was sounding more adventurous than either the Cotters or the Groffs.

“Sure, why not?” Verdugo said of the Super Bowl Live events on Nicollet Mall. “I’m here for the joy of it and to try to experience it as much as I can.

An Eagles fan ever since he wound up on a Pop Warner football team with that name, Verdugo said he decided about seven years ago when he became an adult that he would go if his Eagles ever returned to the Super Bowl. And he said he wasn’t disappointed that the game was scheduled for the frigid north when that opportunity arrived.

“It’s a nice change of scenery,” he said. “I love the snow.”

Speaking of scenery, the views are amazing from the four zip lines across the Mississippi River, according to 12-year-old Ella Matzke of Lake City.

“Amazing,” Matzke said after she, her sister Olivia and two cousins slid simultaneously 100-feet above the river toward the downtown skyline. “… They count down — three, two, one. Then you kind of jump off and you’re going really, really fast.”

Which only added to the wind chill. The air temperature was about 4 degrees when Matzke jumped.

“Yeah, it was pretty cold,” she said.

It was an experience that Verdugo and the other visitors from around the country won’t taste, even if they wanted to brave the cold. Of the 10,000 zip line tickets available during its 10 days of operation, 96 percent were sold within Minnesota.

The Crespins had two of those tickets and were planning to spend plenty of time on the Nicollet Mall as well. A bit of nip in the air couldn’t stop them from being part of the revelry.

“It’s not like you can say, ‘Well, next year we can come down here and experience the Super Bowl,” Jason Crespin said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Mark Fischenich is a reporter for The Free Press, of Mankato, Minn.