Road to the Superbowl Halftime Show
January 15, 2005
by Craig Curtice

One year after the infamous halftime breast-baring incident, FOX is determined to keep this year’s Super Bowl show family-friendly with singer Paul McCartney. Well I did a little investigating and it turns out this McCartney character was in a band called the Beatles and they did drugs! He’s also a strict vegetarian and that isn’t going to sit well with the folks in red states. You saw it here first; there could be another major scandal brewing.

Seriously though, isn’t halftime about halftime? It’s a necessary and warranted break in tough, physical gridiron action. From Pop Warner leagues to high school and college, players and coaches use this time to regroup for the second half of play, while spectators take bathroom breaks, eat food and of course, socialize. There was a time in the NFL when a marching band provided a nice traditional backdrop to the intermission period.

When the first Super Bowl took place in 1967, the halftime show was a modest affair that featured marching bands from Michigan and Arizona Universities. In fact the first fifteen or so Super Bowl games saw mainly top-notch college bands, Up With People, and vocal greats like Ella Fitzgerald performing. Sound simpleton? Maybe, but they were definitely dignified (that is, no nipples).

Nowadays for stadium spectators, halftime is a busy time. A trip to the bathroom is practically mandatory and there’s always a line. Next you’ll probably want to get a beer or two, hit the head again, grab two more beers before they stop selling, and finally get back to your seat for the second half kick-off. With all the drinking and peeing who’s got time to watch some lame halftime show anyway?

Well, that would be the millions of people watching the game on television. In the modern age of limitless TV channels, the Super Bowl halftime show is always over-hyped because budget-breaking advertisers are desperate to keep the public’s attention. My theory is that the halftime show began the downward sucking spiral during Super Bowl XXV when the featured performer was the schmaltzy New Kids On The Block.

Two years later in another completely overblown production, Michael Jackson sang “Heal the World” gleefully surrounded by 3,500 school kids. Seems sick now, right? And in the years since, every show seems to fumble and stumble trying to cover-up awful lip-synching with booming pyrotechnics, giant video screens, confetti, smoke, and scads of gyrating back-up dancers trampling the field.

But it’s not just the Super Bowl that has increasingly turgid intermissions. The NCAA Football Championship on January 4th featured American Idol’s Kelly Clarkson, preening country rocker Trace Adkins, and that talent-less mongrel Ashlee Simpson. The show was plagued by microphone problems and ended with Simpson’s spastic warbling. Though Simpson was singing at times, she clearly had extra vocal help from the soundboard crew. Afterward a capacity crowd rightfully booed her.

No wonder the world hates us. America is supposed to be the entertainment capital of the world, yet our halftime shows blow. The millions of dollars spent flying in musical performers not to sing is downright un-American and it’s almost embarrassing that we broadcast this thing to every inch of the globe when we’re the only country (besides Canada) that even plays football.

I have an idea to restore the dignity back to the Super Bowl halftime show: Frisbee dogs. What’s cooler than dogs doing amazing aerial flips and catching Frisbees? Or better yet, let’s resurrect a half-hour version of Battle of the Network Stars. Wow, just think about the ladies from the ABC team – Hatcher, Garner, and that raven-haired hottie from LOST. Uh-Hmm. What was I talking about again?

(Craig Curtice is a volunteer staff writer for 2 Walls Webzine that would settle for a halftime show comprised of dwarf tossing and kooky circus music.)