Here are songs Stones should do at Super Bowl XL

	No need to worry about anything like this happening with the Stones performing at halftime of Super Bowl XL. Frank Micelotta/Getty Images

If I were programming the Super Bowl halftime show, I'd go old school. I'd show the finals of the national punt-pass-and kick competition. Either that, or do one of those deals where a guy throws a football through a hoop for $1 million. It's simple, it's fun and it stays in the flow of the day.

But the NFL has chosen to continue on the musical route, going with the Rolling Stones -- which yes, is one of the top five (three? two?) rock bands of all time. But they'll come on stage, look completely out of context, do three songs, and it will be over before it gets going.

And what three songs will the Stones do? I'd like an all-Beggars Banquet set -- say, Sympathy for the Devil, No Expectations and Salt of the Earth. Or maybe Far Away Eyes or Dead Flowers, songs for which I have soft spots. Although the odds of them breaking out such non-obvious numbers at the Super Bowl are quite slim. Start Me Up is a prohibitive favorite to make the set list.

If the Rolling Stones really wanted to give a memorable halftime show, here's what their set list should be:

• What Have You Done for Me Lately
• Nasty
• That's the Way Love Goes

In short, they should do all Janet Jackson covers.

This would work for several reasons.

1) It would be a genuine rock-and roll-gesture. Just because it is the last thing the people who hired them would want.

2) It would offend no convictions that are worth respecting. Unlike the Timberlake-Jackson tearaway -- which arguably was also a rock-and-roll gesture, albeit one that failed aesthetically, conceptually and in terms of conviction, after everyone retreated to the "wardrobe malfunction" bunker -- the Stones' performance would contain no actual unsuitable content. Freeze-frames of the show could be replayed without any need for pixialation.

3) It would be good music. The Rolling Stones could do great versions of Janet Jackson's songs. It's right in their wheelhouse. It would take the band back to its repackaged R&B roots. I remember a university professor who grew up in the early 1960s telling me why he would listen to black radio when he was growing up in Pittsburgh. "Why would I listen to the Rolling Stones on a white station when I could tune to a black station and hear all the stuff they were ripping off?"

4) It would help the Stones, who lost a little something right around the time Start Me Up became a Microsoft jingle, get back some credibility. If they want to regain some rebel status again, what better place than the Super Bowl. The best answer to the question "what are you rebelling against" will always be "whatta ya got?" And the Super Bowl -- a secular holiday celebrated around a television and noted for its advertising -- is as What We've Got as it gets.

Of course the people who run the show would never let the Stones perform Janet Jackson. Last year the GoDaddy.com commercial that included a reference to wardrobe malfunction wasn't allowed to air a second time.

Which is why the Rolling Stones would have to disguise their set list.

Not that I'm telling anyone to lie. The 1990s taught us all that suborning perjury is a high crime.

But the Stones could just find a way to stumble to it. Keith Richards could pull a Pentangeli move from Godfather II. "Look, these guys offered us a deal. They said, 'We want you to play this, we want you to play that, maybe Honky Tonk Woman, It's Only Rock and Roll.' So we said, 'Yeah, sure.' Because that's what they wanted to hear. But it was all lies. We were going to play Janet Jackson all along." Then maybe -- just maybe -- next year they'll bring back the punt-pass-and-kick.

This week I like:

The over in the Kansas City-Dallas game

The Beach Boys' Smiley Smile/Wild Honey CD.

The first 58 pages of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, which is the first part of his Baroque trilogy (so I've got only about 2,700 pages to go!)

This week I don't like:

The Sacramento Kings' gold uniforms.

The Sunday night ESPN match-up of Detroit-Green Bay. Although it could have some starving-dogs-fighting-over-a-bone appeal.

The ESPN-NASCAR deal. Because with the Busch series races on ESPN2, I have a feeling this will mean less college football.