Flag football

Pop stars team with the Stars and Stripes as patriotism scores big at the Super Bowl

By Joanna Weiss, Globe Staff, 2/2/2002

EW ORLEANS - We've got your football players, reciting the Declaration of Independence. We've got your ex-presidents, reading the text of a musical work about Lincoln. We've got your proudly multicultural ''America the Beautiful,'' your superpatriotic Boston Pops, and Mariah Carey, wherever she happens to fit in. We've got U2. Wait, they're Irish. Well, we're sure they love America, too.

Amid all the confusion of a post-Sept. 11 Super Bowl, with the date change and the security influx and the push and pull of the Patriots' quarterback debate, the entertainment portion of Super Bowl XXXVI has remained decidedly on-message: America is Good.

Get it?

Subtlety is not exactly a part of the Super Bowl spirit.

Just in case, the stars paraded out to spread the word this week, some articulating the theme better than others. Carey, who will sing the national anthem, flounced into a press conference Thursday in a bright red ruffled dress, smiling, smiling, smiling, to show that she was happy, happy, happy. Keith Lockhart, conductor of the Pops, talked about the privilege of leading ''America's Orchestra.''

Marc Anthony, slated to sing ''America the Beautiful'' with Mary J. Blige, spoke poignantly of being in New York on Sept. 11, and he likened a Super Bowl gig to a higher cause: ''It feels like there's a special purpose to fulfill.''

But Blige, sitting beside him in high boots and yellow hot pants, wasn't playing. Happy to be here, she said, but she wasn't going to get all goopy about it. ''It's just like a show or something like that,'' she said.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Yes, performing for a projected TV audience of 800 million is a fairly big deal. Yes, the Super Bowl, for good or bad, is a symbol of America. No, the National Football League has probably not, as one press release claims, assembled the ''GREATEST MUSICAL LINEUP EVER IN SALUTE TO CELEBRATION OF HUMAN SPIRIT.''

This is, after all, just a football game. Right?

Well, there will be football, somewhere. But since the early Super Bowls, when college marching bands from Grambling and Southern and Florida A&M provided the bulk of the entertainment, the pregame and halftime shows have become glitzier, costlier, and noticeably less subtle.

Maybe the turning point was Super Bowl XI, the first to use those colored placards audience members waved from their seats. (It's great for TV.) Maybe it was Super Bowl XXII, when the halftime show featured 88 grand pianos and a line of Rockettes.

Or maybe it happened sometime between Super Bowl XXVII, when the halftime theme was ''Heal the World,'' and Super Bowl XXIX, when it was ''Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye,'' featuring, among other things, Tony Bennett, skydivers, and fire.

Now Super Bowl entertainment is all about excess: Pregame shows are designed to look like Western hoedowns or Caribbean cruises; halftime shows cram as much pyrotechnics as possible into a 12-minute sequence. Last year's halftime extravaganza featured Aerosmith, Blige, Britney Spears, and the 'N Sync guys with fireworks blasting off their fingertips.

For this year, the entertainment bill assembled by August featured different styles of pop: Janet Jackson at halftime, the BeeGees and Creedence Clearwater Revival in the pregame show, Lionel Ri chie singing ''America the Beautiful.''

Then came Sept. 11, and Jackson pulled out, realizing her show didn't fit the mood that was now required, said Jim Steeg, the NFL's executive in charge of special events. The league needed a national pep rally.

And the NFL decided it needed to change its lineup, Steeg said. League officials wanted someone distinctive for the national anthem, he said, so they contacted Carey and ''were persistent'' when she first turned them down. Next came the Pops, Steeg's idea. He grew up in Winchester and Lexington and remembered them on the Esplanade on the Fourth of July.

From there, Steeg said, the NFL staff and its producers started scouting musical acts. U2's tour played well after Sept. 11. Paul McCartney's song ''Freedom'' was a hit at the tribute concerts. Barry Manilow had written a song, ''Let Freedom Ring,'' that sounded perfect. Sign them up.

The result is a show that will be as flag-waving, hero-thanking, sentimental, loud, and ethnically diverse as possible - something, Steeg said, that reflects ''the mood of the country.''

In some circles, it's sparking a bit of backlash.

''They're late. They're way late. Everybody's done it. I love ''God Bless America,'' but I can't listen to it again,'' said Rick Jones, 50, an optician from Hood River, Ore., with a ticket to the game.

Like many longtime Super Bowl fans, it seems, Jones longs to return to the simpler days.

''Bring me the Grambling marching band, Southern, Ohio State,'' agreed his friend Leon Perahia, 47, who restores classic cars in Los Angeles and is here for his 30th Super Bowl. ''It's just lip-synching. It's not real. Give me a small performance ... and let me enjoy my game.''

But the entertainment juggernaut is hard to stop. New Orleans might be full of sportswriters, but the foreign TV crews are here to see the pop stars. At the rambling press conference Thursday, one reporter gave excited broadcasts in German as Anthony, Blige, and Carey addressed the crowd.

Except for Lockhart, who was well versed in the virtues of the Patriots' special teams, few of the stars professed to know much about football. ''The last thing I learned were the two teams playing,'' Carey said.

And McCartney, the British knight, speaking via satellite from New York, said the only thing he knew about the Super Bowl was that the Patriots had no stars.

''I hear that they're the underdogs,'' he said.

Don't worry, Paul. That's really all you need to know about America.