Monday, February 7, 2011

Stupor Bowl Memories...

Cherished moments from SB XLV:

Take it from the top, which Christina Aguilera should do. Thank you, Christina, for reinventing the lyrics to the national anthem. The freakin' national anthem, girlfriend! Sorry, but Maurice Cheeks wasn't there to bail you out. And thanks to you, now, for future Super Bowls, the national anthem will have to be prerecorded and lip-sync'd. If I want a real offbeat interpretation of the anthem, I'll call up my Jose Feliciano version from the World Series a few decades ago.

Speaking of musical interpretations, loved the Super Bowl halftime show, but is it over yet? Anyone else they're gonna' trot out? Maybe Smokey Robinson? Robby Robinson? Sugar Ray Robinson? Tell 'em to turn on Fergie's mike next time. And will.i.am? You're not. I am hereby nominating Cheap Trick for next year's halftime show. Rock icons, legacy band, don't need Slash and Usher to make 'em complete. Sound as good live as they do in the studio. Plus, they're from Rockford, Ill., so at least one entity from the Prairie State will be a winner at the Super Bowl for the first time since "SB XX."

And as noted in the latest WIRED, as Super Bowl games keep getting better, closer and more competitively exciting, halftime shows couldn't be getting more distant (Paul McCartney?), sterile (Tom Petty) and predictable (last night) since the Justin Timberlake-Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction. The Black-Eyed Peas are good - very good - but that performance would've been better taped in a studio and rebroadcast on the Jumbotron. And it wouldn't have looked much different if they had.

Sorta' like Ben Roethlisberger's performance (on the field, that is), y'know what I mean?

Speaking of Big Ben, I kept hearing and reading commentaries all week and all day game day, that a Steelers' win would've given him redemption from his off-season fiasco that earned him a four-game suspension (should've been four years). Redemption, huh? Is that so? As if that would've made him a better person? Somewhere in Georgia (or wherever), a young girl who thought she was going to meet a football hero at a bar one night, got her redemption, so to speak.

The Rooney family may deserve better as pioneers of the game. But I don't think an "At Home With The Roethlisbergers" reality show is going to be appearing on VH-1 any time in the immediate future. I'd sooner watch Ozzie Osbourne and Justin Bieber do a commercial together.

No, wait...

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Howard Schlossberg is the editor of the academic research-oriented "Journal of Sports Media" and invites your submissions. See the web site for details. He is also an Associate Professor of Journalism at Columbia College Chicago and a sports correspondent for "The Daily Herald" in Arlington Heights, Ill.


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