For Super Bowl Sunday, ordinary superlatives just won’t do. Everything is bigger. Everything is better. Everything is tastier. Everything is sexier, prettier, more exciting, and more beautiful. Too bad they have to go and ruin it by playing a boring game of football.
The “Super” in “Super Bowl” is rarely realized as far as the game itself is concerned. But that’s okay. Football is football and if we don’t have Tom Brady to ogle this year, at least we got Patrick Mahomes.
Oh — and the lovely Rihanna will be performing the Halftime Show. The billionaire entrepreneur/singer hasn’t performed live in seven years. Let’s hope there isn’t a reason for that.
Rihanna, this year’s halftime headliner, isn’t just a hitmaker — she’s also a mogul. She has founded three successful companies, which have helped make her the world’s wealthiest female musician, with an estimated net worth of $1.7 billion. She has brought that business savvy to tonight’s performance: Her cosmetics brand, Fenty Beauty, is selling a special edition “Game Day Collection” (with a football-shaped sponge), while her clothing line, Savage x Fenty, is selling a $60 graphic T-shirt expressing a sentiment many of her fans share: “Rihanna Concert Interrupted by a Football Game, Weird but Whatever.”
The National Anthem will be performed by country crooner Chris Stapleton. Let’s hope he’s mindful of the correct way to play and sing the anthem. The tune of the Star Spangled Banner was a drinking song adapted to the words written by Francis Scott Key. It should be sung a little faster than one beat for every human heartbeat — a sprightly pace. It’s not a dirge, as some pop singers sing it, nor is it a soulful ballad sung like a Motown hit song.
“The national anthem’s not an easy song for singers. It’s one that can go horribly wrong as we’ve seen many times in the past,” Stapleton said at a media event during the leadup to the game. “But if you’re gonna do it, this is the place to do it. I’m gonna go out there and play. And play it like I play it.”
The over/under for the length of the anthem this year is 2 minutes and 5 seconds. That sounds about right but nothing can ever match the jaw-dropping rendition performed by Whitney Houston before the 1991 Super Bowl. A little context: the game was played 10 days after the Persian Gulf War began and patriotic sentiment was at a fever pitch. Houston’s rendition was simple, elegant, and beautiful.
And oh my God, what a voice.
This year, Mr. Stapleton’s rendition of our national anthem will be followed by a performance by Babyface singing “America the Beautiful.” And with everyone silently praying to get the damn game underway already, “Abbot Elementary” star Sheryl Lee Ralph will sing what’s been dubbed by some black activists as the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” because separate but equal is sometimes really cool.
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Some fun facts about the Super Bowl:
Super Bowl Sunday is the second-biggest eating day of the year for Americans.
In 2020, the National Chicken Council projected that Americans would eat a record-breaking 1.4 billion chicken wings over Super Bowl weekend
According to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, this Sunday in February is the second-highest day of food consumption in the US, behind Thanksgiving.
Some Super Bowl tickets can cost more than the average American’s annual salary.
A ticket for Super Bowl LIV in 2020 cost between $4,220 and $60,000, and that doesn’t even include the cost of getting to the game and accommodations.
By comparison, according to The Balance, the average American income per capita was $54,129 in 2019.
I don’t like chicken wings, but potato skins, soft pretzels, and Zsu-Zsu’s homemade blue cheese dip for use with about 5 different kinds of chips suit me fine.
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