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Men of all ages will talk about the pinpoint 21-yard pass Aaron Rodgers managed to complete despite the pressure from the Steelers’ defense.
Women and children will laugh at the funny beer and insurance commercials with talking animals in them.
Aside from the battle on the field at Super Bowl XLV, the question this year, as in years before, is whether anybody will be talking about the halftime show for more than five minutes after it ends.
Believe it or not, with the grand spectacle the Super Bowl is now, the halftime show was primarily performed by collegiate marching bands for the league’s first 20 or so years. Popular music acts only started getting in on the fun when New Kids On The Block performed at Super Bowl XXV in 1991.
This year, the National Football League has extended its hand to mainstream mainstays The Black Eyed Peas and hired them to entertain the crowd while the coaches talk strategy at the game’s midway point. With this, the NFL has done something it hadn’t since 2004 — recruit an artist with a recent hit song.
That sounds crazy, but the artists who have performed the past six years are, from most recent to least, The Who, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Prince, The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney. These are all fantastic artists whose concerts I would happily attend, but many people nowadays would call them old, boring or “that guy my dad likes.”
It seems the NFL has finally realized the halftime show won’t decide whether or not football fans will watch the game, but it may decide whether the casual TV viewer will. Football fans will watch regardless — it’s the most important game of the year. Then there is the group of people who will sit down and watch for at least a few minutes only because they heard The Black Eyed Peas were going to play a few songs at some point.
The Super Bowl is one of the biggest American cultural events ever — last year’s game between the Colts and the Saints attracted over 106 million viewers. That makes it the most-watched television program ever, beating out the series finale of M*A*S*H, which aired all the way back in 1983, when Saints quarterback and the game’s MVP Drew Brees was just four years old.
The NFL spent the last six years catering to the audience it already had on the couch. The league woke up, took a look at the charts and got a band most people can agree on to spend a few minutes at midfield — even my father, a Van Morrison junkie, doesn’t mind The Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.”
I’m not saying the Super Bowl needs to do something to gain more viewers. At this point, that is well near impossible, or at the very least, improbable. The point I am trying to make is that getting The Black Eyed Peas on board may be a step in the direction of making the Super Bowl a more complete and more perfect event.
The game is too exciting and the commercials are too entertaining to miss by leaving the room, so halftime has become the designated potty break — at least in my house. A universally accepted band such as The Black Eyed Peas has the potential to make everybody remain attentively in front of the TV during their set — and the potential to cause a mad dash to the bathroom once the game is over.
Bangor Daily News