Super Bowl XXXIV

When the first Super Bowl was played in 1967, onlookers saw it as a colossal struggle between two teams of barely college-educated men for supremacy of the gridiron. The game quickly proved more popular and marketable than anyone could have foreseen. In time, the game alone became unable to meet the marketing needs of the networks, the advertisers, and the NFL. As a consequence, layers and layers of irrelevant entertainments were heaped upon the game until the Super Bowl became less a championship game than a national holiday for chip eating. While diehard football fans such as myself protested "Where were you during pivotal Week 7 of the NFL season?", dilettantes sat down at 6 on Sunday not for the game itself but for the extravaganza of endless pregame festivities, new and costly ads, and (of course) the Spectacular Halftime Show. Some in recent years have prophesied the Super Bowl's eventual demise at the hands of its own hype and extravagance. However, for the most part, this year's entertainments did not disappoint.

The Super Bowl was played one week after the conference championships this year instead of the normal two, and the big question on everyone's lips was "Will there be enough time to heap hype on the game?" The answer was yes, as our various media outlets rose to the challenge. ESPN did a yeoman's job, seemingly featuring three to four hours of Super Bowl previews every night. ABC absolutely blanketed the airwaves with promos for the Super Bowl, seemingly trying to keep pace with the number of promos ABC eventually aired for its own programming during the Super Bowl. (ABC's Bowl promos introduced to us all the bizarre sweeps month strategy of inserting Regis Philbin as a guest star into seemingly every show in ABC's lineup. Although I certainly don't know why all those folks watch "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?", I know it ain't Regis.) Even the Washington Post got into the act, with its banner Sunday headline "Titans and Rams Are Ready for Super Bowl XXXIV." We knew that, guys.

The simple fact that there was only a week, though, did mean that the media were forced to concentrate on the actual game. Thus, consumers of the media did not have to endure the arid stretch during the middle of Week 2 where we are normally treated to celebrity or astrological game predictions and interviews with the kookiest second-string offensive linemen in all of football. This development was all to the good.

All this meant that the entertainment extravaganza itself was less hyped than usual, as well, but it was in fact better than it has been in years past. The real action centered, as it always does, on the Spectacular Halftime Show, which this year featured Enrique Iglesias, Toni Braxton, Christina Aguilera, Phil Collins, Edward James Olmos narrating, the official Super Bowl Halftime Orchestra (which looked a lot like the Atlanta Symphony with new, logo-embossed drums), skaters, fireworks, and some of the most insipid lyrics and speechifying I have ever heard. The lyrics and speechifying were probably written by Disney, which promoted its Disney World Millennium Celebration as if it were going to be this cool.

Despite the problem of the banal script, everyone sang well, especially Braxton. The halftime show was worth watching, in fact, simply for the scene at the end where Braxton was filling the Georgia Dome with her powerful, gospel-trained alto and manufactured Barbie knockoff Aguilera attempted to embellish Braxton's vocal line with her underpowered soprano, embarrassing herself so greatly that she slunk dejectedly away from the spotlight, leaving Braxton to finish in ringing tone. The overwhelming experience of hearing Braxton's voice sail out over everything as dazzling fireworks lit the darkened stadium and the orchestra came to a thunderous climax was both thrilling and peculiarly American, and something the Super Bowl halftime shows should try harder to achieve.

In contrast, the advertisements underwhelmed. Many of them hawked dot-coms but were vague about what products were actually being offered (MicroStrategy, LifeMinders) or tried and failed to achieve that elusive quality marketers are now calling "edge" (Mountain Dew being the most egregious example). Budweiser's elaborations on its "Whazzup?" ad were genial but inessential. No blockbusters, such as Budweiser's own frogs or the Apple HAL ad of last year, emerged, and one has to wonder if everyone got their $2.2-million-for-30-seconds worth. Still, the game this year was an excellent and exciting one, and perhaps with a little more emphasis on what it does well the Super Bowl will yet shake accusations of its irrelevance and become once again a magnetic event.

This is focused quite narrowly on the ads, because I rejected an earlier idea I had to write a review of the game like a movie review ("The narrative went nowhere for thirty minutes, as the coaches could not find a convincing direction for their efforts and paid for it with audience disinterest"). Then I decided I didn't want to try to write about the game in a normal way. Hey, I was on deadline.

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