That's entertainment

The NFL stops at nothing to make the Super Bowl super

SAN DIEGO -- The NFL, a long time ago, gave up any pretense of being subtle about the Super Bowl. This isn't the Really Good Bowl now, is it? We're not talking kind of super, are we?

No, this is the Super-dee-dooper Bowl, with a capital "S," and the NFL spends a lot of time, and a lot of money, trying to make it be just that.

The game is much more than just a game now. It's a slickly produced pregame show, too, and a halftime show that runs about 2 ½ hours, give or take, and rock-and-roll bands and country singers and rappers and a cast of thousands.

Football? The Super Bowl, ladies and gentlemen, is bigger than football.

The Super Bowl is entertainment. The glare of the spotlight, the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd, big finish, leave-'em-wanting-more straight-up entertainment.

"Anyone who tells you there's no pressure to sing the national anthem live to one of the biggest television audiences on the planet," gushed Emily Robison, in one of a million NFL press releases, "is not telling the truth."

Robison, her sister Martie Maguire and lead singer Natalie Maines make up the country music supergroup the Dixie Chicks, who have sold about a bajillion albums, won about a thousand or so music awards and routinely sell out arenas all over the country. The Chicks will sing the national anthem at Qualcomm Stadium on Sunday. It's a big deal. It's a huge deal, in fact.

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OK, so it's not football. But, again. The Super Bowl is more than just football.

Around 130 million people in the United States, 800 million worldwide, will watch the Super Bowl telecast on Sunday. A lot of them haven't watched a game all year. A lot of them won't watch this one.

But they'll check out the pregame. They'll check out the halftime show. They'll talk about it the next day, too. That's a lot of potential CD sales.

It's no wonder, then, that everybody wants in on that kind of audience. And, it seems at times, everybody gets in.

Mariah Carey did the Star Spangled Banner last year. The Backstreet Boys did it the year before. Faith Hill was the year before that.

Whitney Houston did a version of the national anthem during the Gulf War that was absolutely boffo. Garth Brooks did one as country music started to take off in the early '90s. Billy Joel did one to wrap up the '80s.

This is big stuff, Super stuff, stuff so big that the NFL has started adding to its pre-game show. Ray Charles chimed in with America the Beautiful two years ago, Mary J. Blige and Marc Anthony did it last year.

This year, Canadian Celine Dion will belt out God Bless America before the Dixie Chicks take over. Carlos Santana, Michelle Branch and Beyonce Knowles will be out there. Styx, the legendary rock band, will perform before the game, too.

It's a lot. It's maybe too much. It's probably too much. But ABC has a four-hour pre-game show to fill. Warren Sapp can't talk that much football.

Then there's the halftime show. Hoo, boy. Halftime.

Halftime is even bigger. Bigger names, bigger stages, bigger productions. If it doesn't take 2 ½ hours, it sure seems like it.

Michael Jackson started it all, 10 years ago, when he still was the King of Pop. Before then, halftime was a football halftime -- marching bands, basically. Then Jackson came in with a million kids, a huge stage and the Super Bowl halftime, as we know it now, was born.

This year, No Doubt will join Sting and pop-country singer Shania Twain at halftime.

Twain, it must be reported, does not have a reputation as being a great live performer. But she sells CDs, and she looks marvelous, and she fits into a pantsuit like nobody's business, and … well, let's face it, that can be downright entertaining to a lot of people.

"She," says one of the halftime show's producers, Joel Gallen, "was at the top of everyone's list."

Somewhere Sunday night, there will be a TV set tuned to something else. Somewhere, no one will give a hoot about the Chicks or Santana or Dion or Twain or all the glitter and spotlights and fireworks.

Somewhere, even the biggest football game in the country -- a game that everybody says should be a close one -- won't matter. Even with a Super Bowl, even with all that entertainment, the NFL simply can't be everything to everybody.

That won't keep them from trying, though.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.

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