November 26, 2024 • 48 mins
Whether or not you consider yourself a die-hard football fan, you've almost certainly watched a halftime show. Over the past few decades, these performances have almost become their own entertainment entity, featuring some of the world's most notable (and, at times, controversial) celebrities. In the first part of this special two-part episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive into the origin story of the world famous Super Bowl Halftime show.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. That's our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
With arms wide open, Yeah, arms wide open under the sunlight,
sunshine and exposed nor right.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
So, and I think we have all off air pledge
to stop lip syncing this podcast based on some of
the stuff we've learned in our special Thanksgiving series. Welcome
to our two part episode on the history of the
Halftime Show.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Indeed, and you know, it's funny this being a podcast,
y'all would never know sitting at home that we have
wardrobe malfunctions almost every single week.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, I mean, are they malfunctions or are they artistic expression?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Knows a lot about well that is, you know, Oh
my gosh, Ben, I'm glad you brought that out. Let's
save it from when we get into the particular event
in question. But I think that is a lingering conspiratorial
question about that whole debacle, right, Was it intentional or
was it a malfunction?
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I've been bullying your nol brows. We've have been going
through a bit of a sports phase, often on this
episode about halftime shows is something that you don't have
to be a football head to enjoy. Oh football head,
I forgot. That's an insult.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Okay, Oh yeah, that's what they called Arnold on Hey Arnold,
the Nickelodeon children's cartoon.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Well, ridiculous historians, fell boys if that's another reference Ronald
or girl ohs alike. Anyway, kiddos, we're talking about We
are talking about that sport called football. It's confusing to
the rest of the world because, as Nate Bargetzi said
on Saturday Night Live, it's the sport where you rarely
(02:18):
use your feet. There's sometimes there's a little kicking.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, but it's in the name, which kind of makes
it extra confusing. Not to mention that I think the
more globally popular use of that name is in fact
a sport where you use your feet exclusively, maybe a
little knee, maybe a little head. But we do typically
refer to this as American football.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yes, it's also the most popular sport in the world,
already being called football soccer. Yeah, nah, get out of
the way, Get out of the way. We're calling our sport football, right,
it's the Imperial system of sports.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Right, It's like if you were getting into acting today
and your name was Bill Murray, somebody would have to
change their name and it's not going to be Bill Prime.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
It's true, that's true. I mean, it's one of those
things like that. We're all big fans of that show
Slow Horses, which was created and often written by a
guy named Will Smith who just decided he was going
to rock with Will Smith. No man in black was
going to force him to change his name.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
It's the wild wild West out there in Hollywood. Technically
it's in the western part of the country. Moving on,
whether you love or hate football in the United States,
especially when it comes to revenue, American football is keen.
(03:37):
Maybe we popped the top on this bad Boy with
a quote from our pal Kurt Baidenhausen over at Sportico.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I love the name of Sportico, and I also love
the name Kurt Baidenhausen. The NFL posted an annual revenue
of twenty point five billion dollars this year in this
twenty twenty three twenty twenty four season, and that is
not including college football. And you know, we talked a
little bit in recent episodes just about how football, American football,
(04:06):
we will just be calling it football in this episode
is uniquely designed to serve ads on the right now
because of the kind of herky jerky, stardy stopping nature
of the game.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, especially in its modern iteration. Arguably, the most American
part of American football is not the game itself. It's
something that occurs during the biggest stop and start period
of your typical game, which is halftime. During halftime in
(04:42):
any other less American sport, people would walk and get snacks.
There would be it would be an intermission, like in
your favorite play or in the film my Dad tricked
me into scene as a child Gettysburg, which is super
duper long for a child and has intermission. They don't
do any of that in football. In American football, they
(05:05):
have a big show, especially during the biggest game in
all of football, them the Super Bowl. There's a halftime show,
and a lot of people who don't even care about
football the sport still tune in just for this particular
moment to see their favorite celebrity and possibly the newest
pop culture scandal occur between the first and second part
(05:26):
of the game.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
In real time. And that's not to say that you know,
you couldn't use this if you were more of the
sporto variety, use this as an opportunity to go grab
yourself a beer or snack, but your eyeballs would be
missing out on some serious displays of opulence.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yes, yeah, again, thoroughly American and the most hyperbolic of ways.
You'll see some of the greatest musicians of all times
singing or pretending to sing. As we'll get to you'll
also see elaborate stagecraft and choreography, and of course, once
in a while, a boob.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah, once in a while. Bet he'll have her neked
by the end of this song. And he did do
that thing. Our dog, you dog JT justin Timberley.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Oh, he's been going through and I hope things are
all right for him. But our question in this week series,
as you celebrate the holidays with your family, you may
be about to watch this massive celebration. Where did it
come from? Let's talk about the founding of the Super
Bowl or superb Owl. Let's talk about the very first
(06:34):
halftime show and how we got from there to the
mad cap insanity of Fiata that the halftime show has
become today. Maybe, you know, maybe before we to really
understand the Super Bowl. Maybe we talk a little bit
about what American football is because we've said it's different from,
you know, the more popular football.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
I could sure use the refresher. It's one of the
ones that's still continue used to confound me, and it
confounds many others who are unfamiliar with the sport who
might be watching it for the first time. What is
the deal with this whole display of Napoleonic trench warfare
that Max very helpfully pointed out to me is a
very very good analog for the nature of the game
(07:17):
of American football. How come sometimes you kick the ball
but usually just throw it around or run with it.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
It's a great series of questions, and the sport itself
has these what appeared to be eccentricities or irregularities because
of its blended family origins. It evolves from rugby, and
it evolves from actual soccer aka football prime. But it
differs from soccer chiefly in that, like rugby, it allows
(07:47):
the players to touch through carry the ball with their hands,
so it's different from soccer in that way. But it's
also different from rugby because it allows each side to
control the ball in alternating possessions. That's where you that's
where you try to get your points before you run
out of downs.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah. I think of all the American kind of past times,
it is the most full on physical and you know,
full contact of the sports. You know, in baseball you
might get in some dust ups, you might bump into
somebody running, but you're not going to tackle them to
the ground, you know, and hold them there, dog pile
on them. It is a much kinder, gentler sport than
(08:26):
American football. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Now, this dog pile tackling stuff that can happen in
other sports, but usually if it does, it's a fracas
on the field, something has gone wrong. Yes, the sport
of American football is played with two teams, eleven people
on each side. And this sport is thoroughly North American.
(08:48):
It's practiced primarily in the United States. It has become
the country's leading spectator sport as we record today. It also,
to be fair, gained a bit of a fun folloween
in Canada, and it evolved over time to a twelve
man game, but it never quite knocked the zeitgeist the
way that ice hockey does in Canada or the way
(09:11):
that American football does here in the States.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, that's right, even here in the States. I mean,
you know, soccer football prime is quite has gained popularity
in the last decade or so. But the opposite isn't
really true of American football. It doesn't really port particularly
well to other countries, though the culture of it does
seem to do so, like because the Super Bowl and
(09:34):
the Super Bowl halftime showing all of the ads are
a genuine pop cultural phenomenon that do make waves in
other parts of the world. Yeah, and even.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Before the rise of this advertising boom associated with football,
even before then, it kind of made sense that the
United States version of football may not catch on across
the world just because of some logistical stuff. You need
a lot of people to play it, you need a
(10:06):
lot of equipment to play it. It can be expensive.
As we mentioned in the past. If you look at soccer,
you just need a dream, a ball, and some kind
of piece of land that has two sides.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, it's right. And I mean football stadiums in and
of themselves are massive displays of opulence. Here in Atlanta,
we have the very brutal kind of looming structure that
is the Mercedes Benz Stadium.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
I like it. It looks like a tied you that got
turned to stone by some kind of experimental When I
say it looms.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
It does when you're driving around and you start to
see the edge of it creeping over the horizon. It's
a little bit sinister. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah, it's gonna look really cool when they implode it
in a Marti buskets in the way.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, this is my first experience there was amazing and
perhaps not normal because it was one of the vaccination
centers during the pandemic, and so when I went in
there for the first time, it was empty except for
me and like twelve people who had to sit around
and make sure they didn't die after getting shot up.
(11:10):
It was the scale of it really hits when you
see it empty. It's like a cathedral.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I have only been in there once in my entire life,
and it was for a similarly kind of odd reason.
It was odd, but it was to vote. They had
voting set up in there for like a local election,
and I went when it was pretty dead, and it
was very, very weird to be in there with it
just a handful of your closest friends. You guys, remember
when Kanye kind of haunted the Mercedes Benz like the opera.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yes, yeah, he had a military bunk. I did not.
I did not see mister West during the vaccination stuff
that maybe due to his stance on vaccines unclear. Maybe
he was making a track, but they have.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Been lurking just in the wings, you know, wearing some
sort of fantai.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yes, luckily he wasn't making people participate in a listening party,
which is not to be confused with the concert.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Sorry, they did have one. They do it.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
But I lucked out, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, well yeah, and then to be there. Typically people
that show up to those things are there of their
own free purpose. A huge though, where you have a
guy who's kind of hyping up their own tracks, it's
a little it's a little try hard.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I'm not going I mean, it's a whole stadium too.
You know, there might be a different venue you could
use for that. I'm just saying I lucked out again
because he didn't jump out in ambush has I haven't
read much news about Kanye recently. Loved his first albums.
I hope he's hope he's making it through as we
all are trying.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
To do same and we know that.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Look, like we said at the top, you might not
be a fan of sports at all. You might not
be a fan of football in particular, but odds are
you are probably a fan of at least a handful
of celebrities and notable figures who have made an appearance
at the halftime shows. So you've at least it's crazy.
(13:03):
It doesn't happen with other sports. You've at least seen
the halftime show once or some clip of it if
you live in the States.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Sure, and all halftime shows are not created equally. Some
of them fizzle a bit and they're kind of like
womp womp, and some of them live on in either
infamy or you know, like in the annals of pop
cultural fame, like Prince for example, in his two thousand
and seven halftime performance where it rained while he was
(13:34):
playing Purple Rain and the dude just ripped it, and
it really is looked at as one because they're you know,
you can find it on YouTube now. And as Prince
you know, has left this mortal coil rip to one
of the greats. It is a fantastic example of his
musicality and just performing genius.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Or the King of pop pause, which we'll get to,
or the there's also the lampooning of the pop in
circumstances like Red Hot Chili Peppers famously did when they
refuse to plug in their guitars because they want to
participate in a farce. There's all this sort of stuff
that goes into the halftime show of what is sometimes
(14:13):
called gridiron football. That's another differentiation because as the vertical
lines on the rectangular field. So if we want to
understand halftime celebration, we talk about the game itself. The
super Bowl game. It is pretty much national holiday, especially
when you get into states that have tons of football
(14:35):
fans like Wisconsin. Super Bowl cheeseheads. Yet you're not going
to get anything done that day, not really.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Especially if your city's team or a particularly viament football
craze cities team is in the game and either wins
or loses. Sometimes either of those results can lead to,
you know, people setting cars on fire and stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
And if the game is happening in your city, not
only are you not getting anything done that day, you
probably should stay home because you're definitely gonna have a
tough time driving places.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
It's true, So why don't we talk a little bit
about the evolution of the super Bowl, or as you
put it, Ben, the superb Owl, which I can only
imagine is a reference to the giant owl structure in
Bohemian Grove where all the weird rich cultists gather. Because
(15:34):
you know, things like the super Bowl and like, you know,
the displays of that level of wealth and commerce and
all of the famous people that get to go and
are sitting in those boxes. I mean, there gotta be
some illuminatis hanging out or involved in the super Bowl.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
And I just like superb Owl because it's a great
TYPEO word joke. But I'm with you there. Even just
the cost of super Bowl tickets are a pretty big
differentiator between the casual fan, the diehard fan who saves
up for years, and of course members of the illuminati
who probably pay the blood price.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
They probably pay the blood price in the and I
mean even you know, for us mere mortals to get
just a basic super Bowl ticket can be incredibly.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Difficult, right, Oh yeah, yeah, it can get past money.
We're talking lottery, We're talking hustling all kinds of stuff.
And look, if you made it to the very first
super Bowl, it would have been way easier for you
to get in. This is nineteen sixty seven, and it
happens because previous to sixty seven there were two competing
(16:39):
football leagues, the NFL which we know today and the
AFL National Football League American Football League. They negotiated this
team up and they said, look, we're going to join together.
We're going to make our forces one and at the
end of every season, we're going to play a championship
game to see who is the best. And there were
(16:59):
a lot of stakeholders in this. There were a lot
of team owners who were part of the negotiation, and
they all had the same two goals. Better competition, yes, sure,
but also more money. Could do way more money, so
much more money.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah. Lamar Hunt was the owner at the time of
the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs. He may have heard of
because of their proximity to Taylor Swift. He was a
big part of these negotiations. He kind of as a gag,
as a little silly goof suggested calling it the Super
Bowl because his kids liked to play with a toy
that was very popular at the time, at a time
(17:39):
when maybe there wasn't quite as much saturation in the
shoulder of the toy market. It has had a thing
called a super Bowl. There's literally a bouncy ball that
bounced quite quite efficiently.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And there was super stick at the time, there was
super handful of dirt. It was just a different super rock,
just a different era of toys.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeh, superspring. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
That was the slinking that was advanced for the time. Okay,
I think the slinking was out by the sixties. But
the super Bowl, yes, as a throwaway, kitting not kidding phrase. Originally,
it didn't catch on. We know that he was kidding
around about this because Hunt wrote to the NFL commissioner
(18:23):
in nineteen sixty six and literally said, I have kiddingly
called it the super Bowl, which obviously can be approved upon.
He thought the name was too corny to ever be
used in public, And then Rizzelle said, why don't we
call it the Big One the Pro Bowl?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah, I sure, it's funny. It's one of those things though,
where it's like sometimes the stand in name for a
thing just sticks around for so long and nobody comes
up with a better idea that just becomes the thing.
But now this far removed from the original Super Bowl
of nineteen sixty seven. Can you imagine it be called
anything else? I mean, it's like, maybe the Mega Bowl
(19:04):
would be kind of cool, but super Bowl it just
kind of makes sense, you know, for what a massive
thing it would become. Maybe it didn't earn the name
right away, though, and that maybe is what led to
the little bit of a tongue in cheek kind of
feeling around that name.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
My spiritual friends would say it manifested itself. We know
that the first matchups proceeded even as they were trying
to figure out this name stuff. And originally they called
it the very buttoned up AFLFL World Championship Game, which
is just a mouthful.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
It's too much.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
So sports writers and fans, like already in the court
of public opinion, started searching for something else to call it.
Everybody just started calling it the Super Bowl. By sixty
nine they said, look, we're going to make that the
official title. And then the next year the two leagues merge. Boom,
Now we have the Super Bowl as an official name.
(20:00):
The name isn't on the first big game again, but
the halftime show, the actual halftime celebration is older than
the name super Bowl.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Well sure, I mean we you know, it's something that
I think we've all experienced, even at high school football games,
where you have like the part of the game where
the marching band comes out and like the nerds get
a chance to shine. This is very, very common. There's
always like a need for some sort of in game
entertainment while things were being shuffled around or the players
(20:32):
were taking a break.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
And if you ever want a mainline that experience, and
you happen to be in our lovely metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia,
if you have not been yet, you've got to go
to the all star Battle of the Bands where all
the HBCU bands get together and they do like a
compilation of their halftime show.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I go almost every year. It's just a blast. I
haven't been, ben, and you are giving me another thing
to add to my Atlanta bucket list.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Oh it's a it's a fun adventure, you know. I
don't know about you guys. We had to the stage.
Now where going, uh like happy hours? Fine or whatever.
But if I have free time, I want to go
have weird adventures. I don't want to go to you know,
the usual places and far and around so so Battle
of the band's great. Uh Knoxville, Tennessee got to me.
(21:26):
They programmed me over the weekend. We get so many
great day trip kind of things around here.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
No, oh for sure. Yeah. You mentioned also on a
recent episode the uh there's like a a Tibetan temple
or like a Buddhist temple, I believe.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, there there are a couple. There's Baps,
which is the Hindi temple or Hindu temple, our Lady
of the Holy Spirit, which is the Catholic place. There
is a there are a couple of Watts we could visit,
which are you know, the Buddhist temples. Oh man, you
know you find your own super Bowl halftimes.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
I guess it's what we say. It's true. And we're
going to get into some ways that super Bowl halftime
shows in and of themselves are and football honestly are
a kind of religion. Are a kind of spiritual experience
for a lot of people. Right, Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
And this may not have been apparent in the very
first Super Bowl halftime show. It was, you know, to
your point, it was by twenty twenty four standards, pretty modest.
It's just a way to entertain folks. It is very
much a live intermission. And I think the assumption was
(22:37):
this is where people visit the restroom. This is where
people go get snacks and you know, I guess re
up on their sodas or whatever. So they had marching bands,
but they said this is a big deal game. So
they had two marching bands.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
That's right, the marching bands of the University of Arizona
and Grambling State University. I don't know Gramble State, but
I guess they were big at the time. And you know,
the idea of combining these bands much like that Battle
of the Band situation. Or maybe they weren't combined, but
they were certainly playing in tandem and kind of switching off.
(23:13):
And I also love this quote from the piece the
evolution of the Super Bowl Halftime Show then versus now
at andevent dot com. They intended this event to help
celebrate collegiate spirit and musicality over commercial spectacle. Oh how
far we have fallen since those simpler days.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Well, the turns of tables four downs on that one
we go to. Also Steven Wood, writing for History in
Steven Woods points out a very human individual aspect to
the story. He introduces us to a guy named Duke Fields.
Duke Fields, domin of Determinism, perhaps is only nineteen years old.
(23:53):
During the first halftime show and he plays at the
Super Bowl. The super is occurring between the Kansas City
Chiefs and the Green Bay Packers. He is a veteran
at this point. He's played for Grambling State University for
a while now. This is old beans to him. Grambling,
(24:14):
by the way, is in Louisiana, and he looks into
the stands at the LA Coliseum and he says, I
wonder how this gig is going to compare to all
the other all the other performances I've done during my
time with this band. And he says this, we got
(24:35):
to give the direct quote. Then I saw the rocket men.
Two guys with jet packs. My god, those things were loud.
I know they had jet packs back in ninety six.
We were still working on that. We were working on
good ones. These are not the good ones.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Fair enough, Yeah, two guys with jet packs. He had
no idea at the time that he was participating in
history and that this meager event, though seemingly a little
different with the jet pack men, was going to lay
the groundwork for what would become one of the hugest,
most ostentatious displays of wealth and pop culture and commerce
(25:12):
and advertising in the history of the world. The world,
the world.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, let's go to Bonnie Berkowitz, whom we've mentioned in
previous episodes, as well as lazarro Gamio writing for The
Washington Post. They say this first show was indeed free
of commercialization, what they call bloat. They said, quote two
college bands formed shapes of classic Americana such as a
(25:36):
paddle boat and the Liberty Belt.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Charmy. Yes, but however, despite its wholesome beginnings, there were
still some controversies. They go on. All this played out
in Los Angeles, which was recovering from the nineteen sixty
five Watts riots, which were horrific at the time. The
band from Grambling was criticized by some in the African
American community for playing amid the climate of racial tension.
(26:02):
And this comes from Larry Pannell, who was at the
time of this article the director of the band.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And we know everything occurs within its own context, and
people are pretty talented at figuring out when a show
is going to be a hit. So other historically black
schools look at the super Bowl look at Grambling State,
and they say, this is a huge opportunity for us.
This is a huge showcase. This really promotes the visibility
(26:33):
of not just our band, but of our own school.
So now Grambling is considered a huge trailblazer in this regard.
You can actually find footage of the original Super Bowl
halftime show on YouTube, but we want to warn you
in advance, folks, it is not the best quality. It
might as a matter of fact, the quality is so
(26:55):
bad that it might be fun just to have a
cinema of the mind, you know. I mean look at
some still photos.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
One hundred, I gotta know that. I mean, like, were
the jet packs like functional they were flying around, zooming around.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Yeah, functional, I would say, functional, but not practical.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Okay, it was just for the show.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Like they kind of like went up and like they
weren't flying into the stands and like a high five people.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Okay, yeah, they weren't doing you know, bluege these guys
were not.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, I understand. Funny thing too, is something as the
looms as large as the super Bowl is going to
end up having some kind of historical game of tele
telephone kind of conspiracy theories surrounding it, or maybe even
Mandela effect kind of stuff where it's like, oh, I
remember this thing that definitely happened at the super Bowl,
but in fact the record would show that it either
(27:45):
did not happen or it did not happen the way
one might think. Yes.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Yeah, So the first halftime show, you've got what counts
as a panopoly of variety acts. You got the two
marching bands, you got the jet pack stunt, you got
pigeons being released, and then for some reason there's a
Civil War reenactment, because that goes over well. After that,
after the Watts riots, that goes overwell. But one thing
(28:11):
it did not have, to the point about myths, it
did not have the Three Stooges. But it appears this
is actually what we would call a factoid. A factoid
is something that sounds true and it is the and
is not true. So it is a factoid or a
(28:32):
piece of mis info to say the Three Stooges performed
at halftime. You can see people even authoritatively listing the
bits that the Stooges did. But Snopes are good friends
at Snopes, they have found this is in fact false,
and it comes from one of the Three Stooges Larry Fine,
(28:53):
you know Larry from the Three Stooges from earlier. He
says that they performed at the halftime show. But the
only record of that being the case comes from this
one guy in his one book. We haven't heard from
two thirds of the Stooges on this.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
And what about Shemp? I want to hear from Shemp? Yeah,
I want to hear from Jaw Yeah. Wait, what does
John say about it?
Speaker 1 (29:17):
No?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
That is interesting, how like one little thing like that said,
with enough authority can convince enough people that they themselves
believe that they saw this thing take place. But no,
no proof, no video, evidence, audio, photographic, or otherwise evidence
exists of this supposed incident taking place. It sounds to
me like fine, maybe with trolling a little bit.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Uh huh, I don't know, yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah.
In fines defense, let's remember he's a legendary comedian. So
when a legendary comedian is writing an autobiography, I think
he's writing a humorous book. So I don't think he
was intentionally trying to mislead people. This happens all the time.
In the Great Game of Telephone, somebody says something as
(30:01):
a joke, you fast forward long enough and people are
quoting it chapter and verse as though it was the
stone cold Steve Austin truth.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Well nowadays nowadays too, with like TikTok videos and stuff
where people will do things under the guist of satire,
but they're really just kind of telling lies with a
straight face. That is a really easy way for misinformation
to spread if you're not kind of doing your own homework.
So be careful out there, guys.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Early on our nascent NFL, which hasn't yet formed, it's
not quite nineteen seventy, they kept this halftime show idea interesting.
The Marching band's a hit. People love the Marching band.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
You know, the Marching band. I love a parade, and.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
They also love the songs that are being played, you know,
school fight songs, patriotic songs, all the hits, right, So
that is a guaranteed winner on the ticket. And then
they mainly kept it to for the first couple of years.
They mainly kept it to area high school bands.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
If I'm not mistaken, our dear friend and colleague and
stuff that I want you to know. Matt Frederick, Yeah,
participated in a Super Bowl as a member of a
marching band here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
That's correct, and you can hear him tell stories about
that on that show over the years.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
It's a great story.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
It's an awesome storyteller, and he's got an inside look
that I think we all appreciate. You can hear, I
believe it's on our episodes about whether or not all
sports are rigged.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
That's right, and that's stuff they don't want you to
know the podcast, But yeah, it's true. The NFL really
did try to stick to this kind of tried and
true formula. And it's kind of interesting too considering where
they went in terms of like these bands and all
of these medleys and stuff. It kind of started that way.
You know. When I say bands, I mean like rock
bands and like big pop artists. The initial days of
(32:02):
the Super Bowl were still kind of this weird jukebox musical.
They just weren't performed by the actual artists themselves.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Yeah, and if we go to nineteen seventy, when the
NFL officially reaches its final form, we see that the
city of New Orleans tried to spice it up a little,
you know, add their own jug to it. Is that
what rights and it went terribly was it was an
(32:34):
utter disaster. An hour before the fourth Super Bowl in
nineteen seventy, it's Kansas City and Minnesota playing in New Orleans.
The weather Bureau says, hey, there might be some tornadoes
on the way, and they say, oh, that's a pickle
because we were hoping to land the mascot of the
(32:55):
Vikings in a hot air balloon. They did land, just
not where they wanted and not how they wanted. The
balloon crashes into the stands. No injuries.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
I was hoping it made it to the Land of Oz.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, it's a twista. And then all of a sudden,
the Wizard of Oz is now like a dude in
like a Viking costume. That would be a fun alternate
reality version of that story.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
You got to take the ruby jockstrap.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
There you go. Oh man, poor Mike Tyson. By the way,
can we just talk really quickly? They're talking. Yes, they
did him dirty man with that jockstrap interview with his
butt hanging out.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Oh yeah, yeah, where he told that kid everybody dies.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Well, that's a different story. If he had been doing
that one in a jockstrap, that would have been doubly weird.
I call that one like a reverse Wonder Shows, and
instead of the kids saying weird existential dread stuff to
an adult, it's the other way around, y'all. If you
haven't seen this, looking up, its Mike Tyson talking to
a little kid who's just excited to be there and
is like, what do you want to leave behind for
your legacy? It's like we all are just dead. It's
(33:57):
a big black nothing sounded like Tony Prano's mom to
this little She's like, thank you so much for that perspective.
He wasn't being rude to this. He was looking dead
in her eyes though, I mean it was intense.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
He wasn't talking down to her. I think he was
trying to give her some hard Tyson truth.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
I know, man, like, yeah, thanks for crushing my dreams,
Mike Tyson.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
You could have gone different directions. But he got his check.
They all got paid. He's fifty eight and will hopefully
retire comfortably. But also Netflix fix your streaming. Yeah, point
that out.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Oh you know, I was. I was actually at a
concert when it was happening. It was just kind of
getting the live tweet updates or whatever. But it does
seem if we're talking about conspiracies. A lot of people
do feel like he went a little easy and took
some punches, and there's some video of him kind of
you know, popping around, popping around. Yeah, but again he
also did seem to lack the mobility.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Yeah, and having a career that's very punishing to your
body for decades. Anyway, they don't We could do a
history of boxing too, that'd be I'm starting out. I
think I'm a sport too. Now, I think I'm a
sport to now put on the list. All right, Yes,
I'm glad. Well, I welcome you on your journey. I
can't wait to learn about more obscure sports with you.
(35:20):
I like the obscure ones. I kind of want to
see a Buskashi game. I don't know, we'll see if
they tour the US. Good luck getting in and getting out.
So the halftime show, the halftime show where the Viking
mascot invades the stands. No one's injured.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Everybody panics O because he plops down in the stands
in thet air balloon. Yes, yeah, the balloon is dangerous.
Those things are big.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yeah, it doesn't land where're supposed to landd and even
before then, we know from our pal Stephen would a history.
Even before then, there was a bad vibe on the game.
The national anthem that has performed during all of these
games is a flop. They have like a spoken word
kind of Shatner version of the national anthem.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Oh say can you see yes by the dogs? Yes,
Brian though he must have been big at the time.
Let's see Pat O'Brien film actor, one hundred screen credits
to his name, Irish American actors in though he was
Angels with dirty face.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Oh, some like a hot he was.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yah, some like it hot. He was
paired with James Cagney a lot. It would seem so
kind of a Golden era Hollywood actor past his prime.
He would have been kind of trotted out as sort
of like a legacy type, you know, piece of Americana. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
He was born in eighteen ninety nine, so he's a
little up there in years by the time we get
to nineteen seventy, which might explain why he was doing
spoken word and not singing. He was also called Hollywood's
Irishman in residence.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Okay, can we also just say really quickly, since we
were briefly talking about the Mandela effect, which is this
idea that of people remember false memories of a thing
that did not actually occur, like the three Stooges performing
at the first Super Bowl halftime show. Kazam, Shazam and
Kazam any number, of course, named after the famous activist
politician freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, who many people believed had
(37:25):
died in prison, which was not in fact the case.
So that's where that comes from.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Check out our episode on this I'll give you, We'll
give you this spoiler. Some people also got confused to
call it the Mandala effect. And the whole reason the
Mandela effect got its name is because these people were
arguing about what really happened to Nelson Mandela, and they
were so set in their way about it that instead
of saying, Oops, maybe we were incorrect, they said, oh,
the past has changed and the multiverse is real, because
(37:53):
otherwise that would mean we were mistaken.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Yeah, that would be way too inconvenient. So for me,
I think I don't know if anybody else's experienced this.
Pat O'Brien was actually in a kind of noirresh gangster
movie with Jimmy Cagney called Angels with Dirty Faces that
I always got flipped with Angels with Filthy Souls, the
fake gangster movie from the Home Alone movies I believed
(38:21):
was real, and I was confirming that by the existence
of Angels with Dirty Faces, because I looked it up
and I thought that was the movie. But it was
actually Angel with Filthy Souls, which they shoot to look
very authentic, and the name is obviously a reference to this,
but no, that movie, in fact was created for the films.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
And Angels with Dirty Faces starring Pad O'Brien, comes out
in nineteen thirty eight. He's probably more notable for some
like a Hot in nineteen fifty nine, but in this,
in this milieu, what we're telling you is there was
a celebrity at the top of this super Bowl, the
fourth Super Bowl, doing the spoken word, like a rendition
(39:00):
of the national anthem, and there's a trumpet player and
a marching band that are accompanying him. So he needs
a mic to be heard because there's a big crowd
as well, there are a lot of instruments around. His
mic cuts off as he's reading the national anthem? What
does the band do? It's just it's an awkward vibe,
(39:20):
which sometimes is worse than a scary vibe. And then
let's see we go through the game, first two quarters,
Kansas City is just running it. And then came the
halftime show, which one sports writer called a Roman circus.
You know why because they did a battle reenactment.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Yeah, but they kind of took some creative that's being
generous liberties. Let's just call them liberties. The Battle of
New Orleans history buffs may remember from history. This was
a reenactment of this historic battle, involving hundreds of re tours,
(40:01):
a recreation of the white stallion of Andrew Jackson. Not
a good guy by the way, Andrew Jackson, very very racist,
horrible figure, but at the time I think maybe he
still had some sheen to him because this was kind
of meant this is there was not really a partisan
aspects to this game. I think they were doing this
or intending this to appeal to everyone, which is interesting
(40:23):
because nowadays it seems like it's to be way off base. Right.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, I would agree that saying taking creative liberties is
perhaps a bit too diplomatic. Their quote unquote reenactment that
had hundreds and hundreds of participants, it was a lot
more like someone with too much money had once had
a conversation about the Battle of New Orleans and then said, okay, yeah,
(40:49):
let's do So there were definitely cannons.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
I had to be it was making really loud. That'll
be a nice spectacle. It's interesting though, too, because that
Roman circus comment that you mentioned, you know, they would
in Roman colisseums, they would flood them at times, and
like reenact sea battles and things like that. And I've
always I'm sure this isn't like a unique take, but
kind of likened football and the spectacle of it all
(41:14):
to like gladiator battles, and like, you know, you are
literally doing it in a Roman style colosseum. So this
I guess maybe there was somebody involved that thought this
made sense, let's bring it back to our history but
also nod to the history that kind of you know,
led to this type of spectacle. But they did a
pretty bad job.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, because you know, whenever you're about to get high fallutin,
you have to ask yourself, should I just stick with
regular fllutin?
Speaker 2 (41:41):
I love getting high fallutin. It's this so we know.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
That the the reenactment was uh not really great because
the Andrew Jackson, the horse that Andrew Jackson was riding,
just bolted and freaked out when they exploded these cannons.
Imagine that right, And there was a weird twist. I
(42:07):
guess they're trying to invoke their own Mandela effect the
Yanks and the Frenchmen in the Battle of New Orleans.
The re enactors are sprawled on the ground, fake dead,
but the red coated British are still just fire and
away zippity doo dah falutin high and an opera singer
(42:27):
is singing Basin Street blues during this halftime circus in
the Sugar Bowl. But even though she's an opera singer,
trumpets are loud and another trumpet player drowns her out.
A newspaper column list and sports fans alike don't love this.
It feels like the pendulum has swung too far in
(42:50):
the direction of the halftime show instead of the actual show,
the Super Bowl. One sports writer damned it with faint praise, saying,
fortunately they sneaked a football game in between. Well that
jazz they sneaked, wouldn't it be snuck? Well, yeah, maybe
this is an old timy way of saying I get it. No,
(43:11):
but that's funny though, because like it really that does
kind of to some seem like what it's become, like
the game is almost an afterthought compared to the advertisements
and the halftime show. And we know the next series
of Super Bowl performances tried to course correct, to swing
the pendulum back to the stuff that you worked, local
(43:34):
marching bands. There were exceptions where they had folks dance
on a giant birthday cake, like the nineteen seventy six
celebration of America's founding with.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Like a showgirl popping out wearing feathers and diamonds. I
think they were dancing on the cames on it, Okay,
I just love I love someone emerging from a giant
fake birthday cake. Oh yeah, we have an episode about
how messed up that past is, don't Oh we do.
There was an unfortunate event, I believe where a woman
did not in fact make it out of the birthday cake.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
But when it works is normal. It's a fun time.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
It's a lot of fun, and you know, they've come
a long way in birthday cake emerging safety those days.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
And there were other you know, funny one offs in
nineteen seventy nine, they were trying to parade around a
float called Salute to the Caribbean, but they snagged a
goalpost and they couldn't get it off the field. That
was more of a funny thing. And then of course
fans storming the stage in nineteen eighty two, it looked
(44:40):
like they were just invading. Looked like a riot was
on the way. And then just like that improv Everywhere group,
they broke out into a choreograph dance.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
It's just like the original flash Mob. Yeah, like flash Mob, Okay,
And then you start getting a little bit more corporate
where you start having some crossovers or let's call them
collabse with other massive entertainment leviathans like the Walt Disney
Company in nineteen eighty four participated in staging a massive
(45:09):
performance that included Mickey Mouse himself. Than in nineteen eighty five,
we saw a show that had just about everything. They
really just threw everything at the wall and to see
what's stuck.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Yeah, and they learned that there is a law of
diminishing returns for variety shows that kicks in, especially when
you're a Matroshka dol format You're a show within a show,
you know what I mean, And it's important for them
to remember that. As the eighties wrap up and as
the super Bowl is getting its stadium sea legs, it
(45:45):
becomes more and more popular, and the traditional halftime show
becomes less and less popular because it's the same old thing.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
I've heard somebody play this song, I know that marching
band this.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
I've seen people dressed up in furry type costumes, you know,
prancing around the fields.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
Yeah, a hot air balloon hitting the stands whatever. We
weirdly have that at home.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Been there, done that? No, it's true. And at this
point too, the game itself is really starting to hit
it stride and becoming massively popular, starting to approach that
level of sensation that we know it today. But the
halftime show just wasn't keeping up with that. So we
can probably pause right now, just before we get to
(46:30):
the modern super Bowl halftime show.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Yes, yeah, and the madness that will ensue you. So
join us later this week for part two of the
history of the super Bowl halftime show. We want we
can't wait for your explorer with us, folks, We've got
you right to the right to the cusp as Nola's
saying of the more modern celebrations, Big big thanks to
(46:53):
Max Williams, our super producer, Big big thanks of course
to aj Bahamas. Jacob's big thanks to who's the football
team that needs the most like empathy? And you'll get
them next time?
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Kind of the angel buffle built.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
They lost four Super Bowls in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
All right, Well the Angels are a baseball seven and
I was thinking of angels in the outfield. Surely there's
a football equivalent.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Yeah, okay, yeah, Bud Golden receiver, and and thank you
and good luck to the Buffalo Williams out there.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Can you also give huge thanks to Jonathan Strickland, the quiztor,
who quite often back in the day on his podcast
Tex Stuff would would talk about the hyper Bowl meaning hyperbole,
but as the hyper Bowl hyper Bowl would have been
a pretty cool futuristic name for a game like this.
Also stand by Mega Bowl.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yeah it's still gonna happen. He's a big, big taste
to the quiztor, Big big taste to Alex Williams who
composed this slap and Bob who else know who else?
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Christopher House you know us and he's Jeff Coats here
in spirit. Ben, thank you, thank you for co authoring
this amazing two part brief with our buddy and super
producer Max Williams. This has been a romp and I
look forward to getting into part two next.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Yeah, this is the cool part, folks.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
So as we call it, as.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
We call it a day, we like to take a
little break in between these What do you think our
halftime show is just just for the three of us
at our pets.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Well, I'm gonna go have a nice coffee and I
am going to do some strange statue reconstruction. Love that.
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(48:47):
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. That's our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
With arms wide open, Yeah, arms wide open under the sunlight,
sunshine and exposed nor right.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
So, and I think we have all off air pledge
to stop lip syncing this podcast based on some of
the stuff we've learned in our special Thanksgiving series. Welcome
to our two part episode on the history of the
Halftime Show.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Indeed, and you know, it's funny this being a podcast,
y'all would never know sitting at home that we have
wardrobe malfunctions almost every single week.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, I mean, are they malfunctions or are they artistic expression?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Knows a lot about well that is, you know, Oh
my gosh, Ben, I'm glad you brought that out. Let's
save it from when we get into the particular event
in question. But I think that is a lingering conspiratorial
question about that whole debacle, right, Was it intentional or
was it a malfunction?
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I've been bullying your nol brows. We've have been going
through a bit of a sports phase, often on this
episode about halftime shows is something that you don't have
to be a football head to enjoy. Oh football head,
I forgot. That's an insult.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Okay, Oh yeah, that's what they called Arnold on Hey Arnold,
the Nickelodeon children's cartoon.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Well, ridiculous historians, fell boys if that's another reference Ronald
or girl ohs alike. Anyway, kiddos, we're talking about We
are talking about that sport called football. It's confusing to
the rest of the world because, as Nate Bargetzi said
on Saturday Night Live, it's the sport where you rarely
(02:18):
use your feet. There's sometimes there's a little kicking.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, but it's in the name, which kind of makes
it extra confusing. Not to mention that I think the
more globally popular use of that name is in fact
a sport where you use your feet exclusively, maybe a
little knee, maybe a little head. But we do typically
refer to this as American football.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yes, it's also the most popular sport in the world,
already being called football soccer. Yeah, nah, get out of
the way, Get out of the way. We're calling our sport football, right,
it's the Imperial system of sports.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Right, It's like if you were getting into acting today
and your name was Bill Murray, somebody would have to
change their name and it's not going to be Bill Prime.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
It's true, that's true. I mean, it's one of those
things like that. We're all big fans of that show
Slow Horses, which was created and often written by a
guy named Will Smith who just decided he was going
to rock with Will Smith. No man in black was
going to force him to change his name.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
It's the wild wild West out there in Hollywood. Technically
it's in the western part of the country. Moving on,
whether you love or hate football in the United States,
especially when it comes to revenue, American football is keen.
(03:37):
Maybe we popped the top on this bad Boy with
a quote from our pal Kurt Baidenhausen over at Sportico.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
I love the name of Sportico, and I also love
the name Kurt Baidenhausen. The NFL posted an annual revenue
of twenty point five billion dollars this year in this
twenty twenty three twenty twenty four season, and that is
not including college football. And you know, we talked a
little bit in recent episodes just about how football, American football,
(04:06):
we will just be calling it football in this episode
is uniquely designed to serve ads on the right now
because of the kind of herky jerky, stardy stopping nature
of the game.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, especially in its modern iteration. Arguably, the most American
part of American football is not the game itself. It's
something that occurs during the biggest stop and start period
of your typical game, which is halftime. During halftime in
(04:42):
any other less American sport, people would walk and get snacks.
There would be it would be an intermission, like in
your favorite play or in the film my Dad tricked
me into scene as a child Gettysburg, which is super
duper long for a child and has intermission. They don't
do any of that in football. In American football, they
(05:05):
have a big show, especially during the biggest game in
all of football, them the Super Bowl. There's a halftime show,
and a lot of people who don't even care about
football the sport still tune in just for this particular
moment to see their favorite celebrity and possibly the newest
pop culture scandal occur between the first and second part
(05:26):
of the game.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
In real time. And that's not to say that you know,
you couldn't use this if you were more of the
sporto variety, use this as an opportunity to go grab
yourself a beer or snack, but your eyeballs would be
missing out on some serious displays of opulence.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yes, yeah, again, thoroughly American and the most hyperbolic of ways.
You'll see some of the greatest musicians of all times
singing or pretending to sing. As we'll get to you'll
also see elaborate stagecraft and choreography, and of course, once
in a while, a boob.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah, once in a while. Bet he'll have her neked
by the end of this song. And he did do
that thing. Our dog, you dog JT justin Timberley.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Oh, he's been going through and I hope things are
all right for him. But our question in this week series,
as you celebrate the holidays with your family, you may
be about to watch this massive celebration. Where did it
come from? Let's talk about the founding of the Super
Bowl or superb Owl. Let's talk about the very first
(06:34):
halftime show and how we got from there to the
mad cap insanity of Fiata that the halftime show has
become today. Maybe, you know, maybe before we to really
understand the Super Bowl. Maybe we talk a little bit
about what American football is because we've said it's different from,
you know, the more popular football.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
I could sure use the refresher. It's one of the
ones that's still continue used to confound me, and it
confounds many others who are unfamiliar with the sport who
might be watching it for the first time. What is
the deal with this whole display of Napoleonic trench warfare
that Max very helpfully pointed out to me is a
very very good analog for the nature of the game
(07:17):
of American football. How come sometimes you kick the ball
but usually just throw it around or run with it.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
It's a great series of questions, and the sport itself
has these what appeared to be eccentricities or irregularities because
of its blended family origins. It evolves from rugby, and
it evolves from actual soccer aka football prime. But it
differs from soccer chiefly in that, like rugby, it allows
(07:47):
the players to touch through carry the ball with their hands,
so it's different from soccer in that way. But it's
also different from rugby because it allows each side to
control the ball in alternating possessions. That's where you that's
where you try to get your points before you run
out of downs.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah. I think of all the American kind of past times,
it is the most full on physical and you know,
full contact of the sports. You know, in baseball you
might get in some dust ups, you might bump into
somebody running, but you're not going to tackle them to
the ground, you know, and hold them there, dog pile
on them. It is a much kinder, gentler sport than
(08:26):
American football. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Now, this dog pile tackling stuff that can happen in
other sports, but usually if it does, it's a fracas
on the field, something has gone wrong. Yes, the sport
of American football is played with two teams, eleven people
on each side. And this sport is thoroughly North American.
(08:48):
It's practiced primarily in the United States. It has become
the country's leading spectator sport as we record today. It also,
to be fair, gained a bit of a fun folloween
in Canada, and it evolved over time to a twelve
man game, but it never quite knocked the zeitgeist the
way that ice hockey does in Canada or the way
(09:11):
that American football does here in the States.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, that's right, even here in the States. I mean,
you know, soccer football prime is quite has gained popularity
in the last decade or so. But the opposite isn't
really true of American football. It doesn't really port particularly
well to other countries, though the culture of it does
seem to do so, like because the Super Bowl and
(09:34):
the Super Bowl halftime showing all of the ads are
a genuine pop cultural phenomenon that do make waves in
other parts of the world. Yeah, and even.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Before the rise of this advertising boom associated with football,
even before then, it kind of made sense that the
United States version of football may not catch on across
the world just because of some logistical stuff. You need
a lot of people to play it, you need a
(10:06):
lot of equipment to play it. It can be expensive.
As we mentioned in the past. If you look at soccer,
you just need a dream, a ball, and some kind
of piece of land that has two sides.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, it's right. And I mean football stadiums in and
of themselves are massive displays of opulence. Here in Atlanta,
we have the very brutal kind of looming structure that
is the Mercedes Benz Stadium.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
I like it. It looks like a tied you that got
turned to stone by some kind of experimental When I
say it looms.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
It does when you're driving around and you start to
see the edge of it creeping over the horizon. It's
a little bit sinister. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah, it's gonna look really cool when they implode it
in a Marti buskets in the way.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, this is my first experience there was amazing and
perhaps not normal because it was one of the vaccination
centers during the pandemic, and so when I went in
there for the first time, it was empty except for
me and like twelve people who had to sit around
and make sure they didn't die after getting shot up.
(11:10):
It was the scale of it really hits when you
see it empty. It's like a cathedral.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I have only been in there once in my entire life,
and it was for a similarly kind of odd reason.
It was odd, but it was to vote. They had
voting set up in there for like a local election,
and I went when it was pretty dead, and it
was very, very weird to be in there with it
just a handful of your closest friends. You guys, remember
when Kanye kind of haunted the Mercedes Benz like the opera.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yes, yeah, he had a military bunk. I did not.
I did not see mister West during the vaccination stuff
that maybe due to his stance on vaccines unclear. Maybe
he was making a track, but they have.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Been lurking just in the wings, you know, wearing some
sort of fantai.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yes, luckily he wasn't making people participate in a listening party,
which is not to be confused with the concert.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Sorry, they did have one. They do it.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
But I lucked out, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, well yeah, and then to be there. Typically people
that show up to those things are there of their
own free purpose. A huge though, where you have a
guy who's kind of hyping up their own tracks, it's
a little it's a little try hard.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I'm not going I mean, it's a whole stadium too.
You know, there might be a different venue you could
use for that. I'm just saying I lucked out again
because he didn't jump out in ambush has I haven't
read much news about Kanye recently. Loved his first albums.
I hope he's hope he's making it through as we
all are trying.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
To do same and we know that.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Look, like we said at the top, you might not
be a fan of sports at all. You might not
be a fan of football in particular, but odds are
you are probably a fan of at least a handful
of celebrities and notable figures who have made an appearance
at the halftime shows. So you've at least it's crazy.
(13:03):
It doesn't happen with other sports. You've at least seen
the halftime show once or some clip of it if
you live in the States.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Sure, and all halftime shows are not created equally. Some
of them fizzle a bit and they're kind of like
womp womp, and some of them live on in either
infamy or you know, like in the annals of pop
cultural fame, like Prince for example, in his two thousand
and seven halftime performance where it rained while he was
(13:34):
playing Purple Rain and the dude just ripped it, and
it really is looked at as one because they're you know,
you can find it on YouTube now. And as Prince
you know, has left this mortal coil rip to one
of the greats. It is a fantastic example of his
musicality and just performing genius.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Or the King of pop pause, which we'll get to,
or the there's also the lampooning of the pop in
circumstances like Red Hot Chili Peppers famously did when they
refuse to plug in their guitars because they want to
participate in a farce. There's all this sort of stuff
that goes into the halftime show of what is sometimes
(14:13):
called gridiron football. That's another differentiation because as the vertical
lines on the rectangular field. So if we want to
understand halftime celebration, we talk about the game itself. The
super Bowl game. It is pretty much national holiday, especially
when you get into states that have tons of football
(14:35):
fans like Wisconsin. Super Bowl cheeseheads. Yet you're not going
to get anything done that day, not really.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Especially if your city's team or a particularly viament football
craze cities team is in the game and either wins
or loses. Sometimes either of those results can lead to,
you know, people setting cars on fire and stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
And if the game is happening in your city, not
only are you not getting anything done that day, you
probably should stay home because you're definitely gonna have a
tough time driving places.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
It's true, So why don't we talk a little bit
about the evolution of the super Bowl, or as you
put it, Ben, the superb Owl, which I can only
imagine is a reference to the giant owl structure in
Bohemian Grove where all the weird rich cultists gather. Because
(15:34):
you know, things like the super Bowl and like, you know,
the displays of that level of wealth and commerce and
all of the famous people that get to go and
are sitting in those boxes. I mean, there gotta be
some illuminatis hanging out or involved in the super Bowl.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
And I just like superb Owl because it's a great
TYPEO word joke. But I'm with you there. Even just
the cost of super Bowl tickets are a pretty big
differentiator between the casual fan, the diehard fan who saves
up for years, and of course members of the illuminati
who probably pay the blood price.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
They probably pay the blood price in the and I
mean even you know, for us mere mortals to get
just a basic super Bowl ticket can be incredibly.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Difficult, right, Oh yeah, yeah, it can get past money.
We're talking lottery, We're talking hustling all kinds of stuff.
And look, if you made it to the very first
super Bowl, it would have been way easier for you
to get in. This is nineteen sixty seven, and it
happens because previous to sixty seven there were two competing
(16:39):
football leagues, the NFL which we know today and the
AFL National Football League American Football League. They negotiated this
team up and they said, look, we're going to join together.
We're going to make our forces one and at the
end of every season, we're going to play a championship
game to see who is the best. And there were
(16:59):
a lot of stakeholders in this. There were a lot
of team owners who were part of the negotiation, and
they all had the same two goals. Better competition, yes, sure,
but also more money. Could do way more money, so
much more money.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah. Lamar Hunt was the owner at the time of
the AFL's Kansas City Chiefs. He may have heard of
because of their proximity to Taylor Swift. He was a
big part of these negotiations. He kind of as a gag,
as a little silly goof suggested calling it the Super
Bowl because his kids liked to play with a toy
that was very popular at the time, at a time
(17:39):
when maybe there wasn't quite as much saturation in the
shoulder of the toy market. It has had a thing
called a super Bowl. There's literally a bouncy ball that
bounced quite quite efficiently.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And there was super stick at the time, there was
super handful of dirt. It was just a different super rock,
just a different era of toys.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeh, superspring. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
That was the slinking that was advanced for the time. Okay,
I think the slinking was out by the sixties. But
the super Bowl, yes, as a throwaway, kitting not kidding phrase. Originally,
it didn't catch on. We know that he was kidding
around about this because Hunt wrote to the NFL commissioner
(18:23):
in nineteen sixty six and literally said, I have kiddingly
called it the super Bowl, which obviously can be approved upon.
He thought the name was too corny to ever be
used in public, And then Rizzelle said, why don't we
call it the Big One the Pro Bowl?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah, I sure, it's funny. It's one of those things though,
where it's like sometimes the stand in name for a
thing just sticks around for so long and nobody comes
up with a better idea that just becomes the thing.
But now this far removed from the original Super Bowl
of nineteen sixty seven. Can you imagine it be called
anything else? I mean, it's like, maybe the Mega Bowl
(19:04):
would be kind of cool, but super Bowl it just
kind of makes sense, you know, for what a massive
thing it would become. Maybe it didn't earn the name
right away, though, and that maybe is what led to
the little bit of a tongue in cheek kind of
feeling around that name.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
My spiritual friends would say it manifested itself. We know
that the first matchups proceeded even as they were trying
to figure out this name stuff. And originally they called
it the very buttoned up AFLFL World Championship Game, which
is just a mouthful.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
It's too much.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
So sports writers and fans, like already in the court
of public opinion, started searching for something else to call it.
Everybody just started calling it the Super Bowl. By sixty
nine they said, look, we're going to make that the
official title. And then the next year the two leagues merge. Boom,
Now we have the Super Bowl as an official name.
(20:00):
The name isn't on the first big game again, but
the halftime show, the actual halftime celebration is older than
the name super Bowl.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Well sure, I mean we you know, it's something that
I think we've all experienced, even at high school football games,
where you have like the part of the game where
the marching band comes out and like the nerds get
a chance to shine. This is very, very common. There's
always like a need for some sort of in game
entertainment while things were being shuffled around or the players
(20:32):
were taking a break.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
And if you ever want a mainline that experience, and
you happen to be in our lovely metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia,
if you have not been yet, you've got to go
to the all star Battle of the Bands where all
the HBCU bands get together and they do like a
compilation of their halftime show.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I go almost every year. It's just a blast. I
haven't been, ben, and you are giving me another thing
to add to my Atlanta bucket list.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Oh it's a it's a fun adventure, you know. I
don't know about you guys. We had to the stage.
Now where going, uh like happy hours? Fine or whatever.
But if I have free time, I want to go
have weird adventures. I don't want to go to you know,
the usual places and far and around so so Battle
of the band's great. Uh Knoxville, Tennessee got to me.
(21:26):
They programmed me over the weekend. We get so many
great day trip kind of things around here.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
No, oh for sure. Yeah. You mentioned also on a
recent episode the uh there's like a a Tibetan temple
or like a Buddhist temple, I believe.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, there there are a couple. There's Baps,
which is the Hindi temple or Hindu temple, our Lady
of the Holy Spirit, which is the Catholic place. There
is a there are a couple of Watts we could visit,
which are you know, the Buddhist temples. Oh man, you
know you find your own super Bowl halftimes.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
I guess it's what we say. It's true. And we're
going to get into some ways that super Bowl halftime
shows in and of themselves are and football honestly are
a kind of religion. Are a kind of spiritual experience
for a lot of people. Right, Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
And this may not have been apparent in the very
first Super Bowl halftime show. It was, you know, to
your point, it was by twenty twenty four standards, pretty modest.
It's just a way to entertain folks. It is very
much a live intermission. And I think the assumption was
(22:37):
this is where people visit the restroom. This is where
people go get snacks and you know, I guess re
up on their sodas or whatever. So they had marching bands,
but they said this is a big deal game. So
they had two marching bands.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
That's right, the marching bands of the University of Arizona
and Grambling State University. I don't know Gramble State, but
I guess they were big at the time. And you know,
the idea of combining these bands much like that Battle
of the Band situation. Or maybe they weren't combined, but
they were certainly playing in tandem and kind of switching off.
(23:13):
And I also love this quote from the piece the
evolution of the Super Bowl Halftime Show then versus now
at andevent dot com. They intended this event to help
celebrate collegiate spirit and musicality over commercial spectacle. Oh how
far we have fallen since those simpler days.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Well, the turns of tables four downs on that one
we go to. Also Steven Wood, writing for History in
Steven Woods points out a very human individual aspect to
the story. He introduces us to a guy named Duke Fields.
Duke Fields, domin of Determinism, perhaps is only nineteen years old.
(23:53):
During the first halftime show and he plays at the
Super Bowl. The super is occurring between the Kansas City
Chiefs and the Green Bay Packers. He is a veteran
at this point. He's played for Grambling State University for
a while now. This is old beans to him. Grambling,
(24:14):
by the way, is in Louisiana, and he looks into
the stands at the LA Coliseum and he says, I
wonder how this gig is going to compare to all
the other all the other performances I've done during my
time with this band. And he says this, we got
(24:35):
to give the direct quote. Then I saw the rocket men.
Two guys with jet packs. My god, those things were loud.
I know they had jet packs back in ninety six.
We were still working on that. We were working on
good ones. These are not the good ones.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Fair enough, Yeah, two guys with jet packs. He had
no idea at the time that he was participating in
history and that this meager event, though seemingly a little
different with the jet pack men, was going to lay
the groundwork for what would become one of the hugest,
most ostentatious displays of wealth and pop culture and commerce
(25:12):
and advertising in the history of the world. The world,
the world.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, let's go to Bonnie Berkowitz, whom we've mentioned in
previous episodes, as well as lazarro Gamio writing for The
Washington Post. They say this first show was indeed free
of commercialization, what they call bloat. They said, quote two
college bands formed shapes of classic Americana such as a
(25:36):
paddle boat and the Liberty Belt.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Charmy. Yes, but however, despite its wholesome beginnings, there were
still some controversies. They go on. All this played out
in Los Angeles, which was recovering from the nineteen sixty
five Watts riots, which were horrific at the time. The
band from Grambling was criticized by some in the African
American community for playing amid the climate of racial tension.
(26:02):
And this comes from Larry Pannell, who was at the
time of this article the director of the band.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
And we know everything occurs within its own context, and
people are pretty talented at figuring out when a show
is going to be a hit. So other historically black
schools look at the super Bowl look at Grambling State,
and they say, this is a huge opportunity for us.
This is a huge showcase. This really promotes the visibility
(26:33):
of not just our band, but of our own school.
So now Grambling is considered a huge trailblazer in this regard.
You can actually find footage of the original Super Bowl
halftime show on YouTube, but we want to warn you
in advance, folks, it is not the best quality. It
might as a matter of fact, the quality is so
(26:55):
bad that it might be fun just to have a
cinema of the mind, you know. I mean look at
some still photos.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
One hundred, I gotta know that. I mean, like, were
the jet packs like functional they were flying around, zooming around.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Yeah, functional, I would say, functional, but not practical.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Okay, it was just for the show.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Like they kind of like went up and like they
weren't flying into the stands and like a high five people.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Okay, yeah, they weren't doing you know, bluege these guys
were not.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, I understand. Funny thing too, is something as the
looms as large as the super Bowl is going to
end up having some kind of historical game of tele
telephone kind of conspiracy theories surrounding it, or maybe even
Mandela effect kind of stuff where it's like, oh, I
remember this thing that definitely happened at the super Bowl,
but in fact the record would show that it either
(27:45):
did not happen or it did not happen the way
one might think. Yes.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Yeah, So the first halftime show, you've got what counts
as a panopoly of variety acts. You got the two
marching bands, you got the jet pack stunt, you got
pigeons being released, and then for some reason there's a
Civil War reenactment, because that goes over well. After that,
after the Watts riots, that goes overwell. But one thing
(28:11):
it did not have, to the point about myths, it
did not have the Three Stooges. But it appears this
is actually what we would call a factoid. A factoid
is something that sounds true and it is the and
is not true. So it is a factoid or a
(28:32):
piece of mis info to say the Three Stooges performed
at halftime. You can see people even authoritatively listing the
bits that the Stooges did. But Snopes are good friends
at Snopes, they have found this is in fact false,
and it comes from one of the Three Stooges Larry Fine,
(28:53):
you know Larry from the Three Stooges from earlier. He
says that they performed at the halftime show. But the
only record of that being the case comes from this
one guy in his one book. We haven't heard from
two thirds of the Stooges on this.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
And what about Shemp? I want to hear from Shemp? Yeah,
I want to hear from Jaw Yeah. Wait, what does
John say about it?
Speaker 1 (29:17):
No?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
That is interesting, how like one little thing like that said,
with enough authority can convince enough people that they themselves
believe that they saw this thing take place. But no,
no proof, no video, evidence, audio, photographic, or otherwise evidence
exists of this supposed incident taking place. It sounds to
me like fine, maybe with trolling a little bit.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Uh huh, I don't know, yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah.
In fines defense, let's remember he's a legendary comedian. So
when a legendary comedian is writing an autobiography, I think
he's writing a humorous book. So I don't think he
was intentionally trying to mislead people. This happens all the time.
In the Great Game of Telephone, somebody says something as
(30:01):
a joke, you fast forward long enough and people are
quoting it chapter and verse as though it was the
stone cold Steve Austin truth.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Well nowadays nowadays too, with like TikTok videos and stuff
where people will do things under the guist of satire,
but they're really just kind of telling lies with a
straight face. That is a really easy way for misinformation
to spread if you're not kind of doing your own homework.
So be careful out there, guys.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Early on our nascent NFL, which hasn't yet formed, it's
not quite nineteen seventy, they kept this halftime show idea interesting.
The Marching band's a hit. People love the Marching band.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
You know, the Marching band. I love a parade, and.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
They also love the songs that are being played, you know,
school fight songs, patriotic songs, all the hits, right, So
that is a guaranteed winner on the ticket. And then
they mainly kept it to for the first couple of years.
They mainly kept it to area high school bands.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
If I'm not mistaken, our dear friend and colleague and
stuff that I want you to know. Matt Frederick, Yeah,
participated in a Super Bowl as a member of a
marching band here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
That's correct, and you can hear him tell stories about
that on that show over the years.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
It's a great story.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
It's an awesome storyteller, and he's got an inside look
that I think we all appreciate. You can hear, I
believe it's on our episodes about whether or not all
sports are rigged.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
That's right, and that's stuff they don't want you to
know the podcast, But yeah, it's true. The NFL really
did try to stick to this kind of tried and
true formula. And it's kind of interesting too considering where
they went in terms of like these bands and all
of these medleys and stuff. It kind of started that way.
You know. When I say bands, I mean like rock
bands and like big pop artists. The initial days of
(32:02):
the Super Bowl were still kind of this weird jukebox musical.
They just weren't performed by the actual artists themselves.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Yeah, and if we go to nineteen seventy, when the
NFL officially reaches its final form, we see that the
city of New Orleans tried to spice it up a little,
you know, add their own jug to it. Is that
what rights and it went terribly was it was an
(32:34):
utter disaster. An hour before the fourth Super Bowl in
nineteen seventy, it's Kansas City and Minnesota playing in New Orleans.
The weather Bureau says, hey, there might be some tornadoes
on the way, and they say, oh, that's a pickle
because we were hoping to land the mascot of the
(32:55):
Vikings in a hot air balloon. They did land, just
not where they wanted and not how they wanted. The
balloon crashes into the stands. No injuries.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
I was hoping it made it to the Land of Oz.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, it's a twista. And then all of a sudden,
the Wizard of Oz is now like a dude in
like a Viking costume. That would be a fun alternate
reality version of that story.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
You got to take the ruby jockstrap.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
There you go. Oh man, poor Mike Tyson. By the way,
can we just talk really quickly? They're talking. Yes, they
did him dirty man with that jockstrap interview with his
butt hanging out.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Oh yeah, yeah, where he told that kid everybody dies.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Well, that's a different story. If he had been doing
that one in a jockstrap, that would have been doubly weird.
I call that one like a reverse Wonder Shows, and
instead of the kids saying weird existential dread stuff to
an adult, it's the other way around, y'all. If you
haven't seen this, looking up, its Mike Tyson talking to
a little kid who's just excited to be there and
is like, what do you want to leave behind for
your legacy? It's like we all are just dead. It's
(33:57):
a big black nothing sounded like Tony Prano's mom to
this little She's like, thank you so much for that perspective.
He wasn't being rude to this. He was looking dead
in her eyes though, I mean it was intense.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
He wasn't talking down to her. I think he was
trying to give her some hard Tyson truth.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
I know, man, like, yeah, thanks for crushing my dreams,
Mike Tyson.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
You could have gone different directions. But he got his check.
They all got paid. He's fifty eight and will hopefully
retire comfortably. But also Netflix fix your streaming. Yeah, point
that out.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Oh you know, I was. I was actually at a
concert when it was happening. It was just kind of
getting the live tweet updates or whatever. But it does
seem if we're talking about conspiracies. A lot of people
do feel like he went a little easy and took
some punches, and there's some video of him kind of
you know, popping around, popping around. Yeah, but again he
also did seem to lack the mobility.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Yeah, and having a career that's very punishing to your
body for decades. Anyway, they don't We could do a
history of boxing too, that'd be I'm starting out. I
think I'm a sport too. Now, I think I'm a
sport to now put on the list. All right, Yes,
I'm glad. Well, I welcome you on your journey. I
can't wait to learn about more obscure sports with you.
(35:20):
I like the obscure ones. I kind of want to
see a Buskashi game. I don't know, we'll see if
they tour the US. Good luck getting in and getting out.
So the halftime show, the halftime show where the Viking
mascot invades the stands. No one's injured.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Everybody panics O because he plops down in the stands
in thet air balloon. Yes, yeah, the balloon is dangerous.
Those things are big.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yeah, it doesn't land where're supposed to landd and even
before then, we know from our pal Stephen would a history.
Even before then, there was a bad vibe on the game.
The national anthem that has performed during all of these
games is a flop. They have like a spoken word
kind of Shatner version of the national anthem.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Oh say can you see yes by the dogs? Yes,
Brian though he must have been big at the time.
Let's see Pat O'Brien film actor, one hundred screen credits
to his name, Irish American actors in though he was
Angels with dirty face.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Oh, some like a hot he was.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yah, some like it hot. He was
paired with James Cagney a lot. It would seem so
kind of a Golden era Hollywood actor past his prime.
He would have been kind of trotted out as sort
of like a legacy type, you know, piece of Americana. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
He was born in eighteen ninety nine, so he's a
little up there in years by the time we get
to nineteen seventy, which might explain why he was doing
spoken word and not singing. He was also called Hollywood's
Irishman in residence.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Okay, can we also just say really quickly, since we
were briefly talking about the Mandela effect, which is this
idea that of people remember false memories of a thing
that did not actually occur, like the three Stooges performing
at the first Super Bowl halftime show. Kazam, Shazam and
Kazam any number, of course, named after the famous activist
politician freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, who many people believed had
(37:25):
died in prison, which was not in fact the case.
So that's where that comes from.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Check out our episode on this I'll give you, We'll
give you this spoiler. Some people also got confused to
call it the Mandala effect. And the whole reason the
Mandela effect got its name is because these people were
arguing about what really happened to Nelson Mandela, and they
were so set in their way about it that instead
of saying, Oops, maybe we were incorrect, they said, oh,
the past has changed and the multiverse is real, because
(37:53):
otherwise that would mean we were mistaken.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Yeah, that would be way too inconvenient. So for me,
I think I don't know if anybody else's experienced this.
Pat O'Brien was actually in a kind of noirresh gangster
movie with Jimmy Cagney called Angels with Dirty Faces that
I always got flipped with Angels with Filthy Souls, the
fake gangster movie from the Home Alone movies I believed
(38:21):
was real, and I was confirming that by the existence
of Angels with Dirty Faces, because I looked it up
and I thought that was the movie. But it was
actually Angel with Filthy Souls, which they shoot to look
very authentic, and the name is obviously a reference to this,
but no, that movie, in fact was created for the films.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
And Angels with Dirty Faces starring Pad O'Brien, comes out
in nineteen thirty eight. He's probably more notable for some
like a Hot in nineteen fifty nine, but in this,
in this milieu, what we're telling you is there was
a celebrity at the top of this super Bowl, the
fourth Super Bowl, doing the spoken word, like a rendition
(39:00):
of the national anthem, and there's a trumpet player and
a marching band that are accompanying him. So he needs
a mic to be heard because there's a big crowd
as well, there are a lot of instruments around. His
mic cuts off as he's reading the national anthem? What
does the band do? It's just it's an awkward vibe,
(39:20):
which sometimes is worse than a scary vibe. And then
let's see we go through the game, first two quarters,
Kansas City is just running it. And then came the
halftime show, which one sports writer called a Roman circus.
You know why because they did a battle reenactment.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Yeah, but they kind of took some creative that's being
generous liberties. Let's just call them liberties. The Battle of
New Orleans history buffs may remember from history. This was
a reenactment of this historic battle, involving hundreds of re tours,
(40:01):
a recreation of the white stallion of Andrew Jackson. Not
a good guy by the way, Andrew Jackson, very very racist,
horrible figure, but at the time I think maybe he
still had some sheen to him because this was kind
of meant this is there was not really a partisan
aspects to this game. I think they were doing this
or intending this to appeal to everyone, which is interesting
(40:23):
because nowadays it seems like it's to be way off base. Right.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, I would agree that saying taking creative liberties is
perhaps a bit too diplomatic. Their quote unquote reenactment that
had hundreds and hundreds of participants, it was a lot
more like someone with too much money had once had
a conversation about the Battle of New Orleans and then said, okay, yeah,
(40:49):
let's do So there were definitely cannons.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
I had to be it was making really loud. That'll
be a nice spectacle. It's interesting though, too, because that
Roman circus comment that you mentioned, you know, they would
in Roman colisseums, they would flood them at times, and
like reenact sea battles and things like that. And I've
always I'm sure this isn't like a unique take, but
kind of likened football and the spectacle of it all
(41:14):
to like gladiator battles, and like, you know, you are
literally doing it in a Roman style colosseum. So this
I guess maybe there was somebody involved that thought this
made sense, let's bring it back to our history but
also nod to the history that kind of you know,
led to this type of spectacle. But they did a
pretty bad job.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, because you know, whenever you're about to get high fallutin,
you have to ask yourself, should I just stick with
regular fllutin?
Speaker 2 (41:41):
I love getting high fallutin. It's this so we know.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
That the the reenactment was uh not really great because
the Andrew Jackson, the horse that Andrew Jackson was riding,
just bolted and freaked out when they exploded these cannons.
Imagine that right, And there was a weird twist. I
(42:07):
guess they're trying to invoke their own Mandela effect the
Yanks and the Frenchmen in the Battle of New Orleans.
The re enactors are sprawled on the ground, fake dead,
but the red coated British are still just fire and
away zippity doo dah falutin high and an opera singer
(42:27):
is singing Basin Street blues during this halftime circus in
the Sugar Bowl. But even though she's an opera singer,
trumpets are loud and another trumpet player drowns her out.
A newspaper column list and sports fans alike don't love this.
It feels like the pendulum has swung too far in
(42:50):
the direction of the halftime show instead of the actual show,
the Super Bowl. One sports writer damned it with faint praise, saying,
fortunately they sneaked a football game in between. Well that
jazz they sneaked, wouldn't it be snuck? Well, yeah, maybe
this is an old timy way of saying I get it. No,
(43:11):
but that's funny though, because like it really that does
kind of to some seem like what it's become, like
the game is almost an afterthought compared to the advertisements
and the halftime show. And we know the next series
of Super Bowl performances tried to course correct, to swing
the pendulum back to the stuff that you worked, local
(43:34):
marching bands. There were exceptions where they had folks dance
on a giant birthday cake, like the nineteen seventy six
celebration of America's founding with.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Like a showgirl popping out wearing feathers and diamonds. I
think they were dancing on the cames on it, Okay,
I just love I love someone emerging from a giant
fake birthday cake. Oh yeah, we have an episode about
how messed up that past is, don't Oh we do.
There was an unfortunate event, I believe where a woman
did not in fact make it out of the birthday cake.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
But when it works is normal. It's a fun time.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
It's a lot of fun, and you know, they've come
a long way in birthday cake emerging safety those days.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
And there were other you know, funny one offs in
nineteen seventy nine, they were trying to parade around a
float called Salute to the Caribbean, but they snagged a
goalpost and they couldn't get it off the field. That
was more of a funny thing. And then of course
fans storming the stage in nineteen eighty two, it looked
(44:40):
like they were just invading. Looked like a riot was
on the way. And then just like that improv Everywhere group,
they broke out into a choreograph dance.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
It's just like the original flash Mob. Yeah, like flash Mob, Okay,
And then you start getting a little bit more corporate
where you start having some crossovers or let's call them
collabse with other massive entertainment leviathans like the Walt Disney
Company in nineteen eighty four participated in staging a massive
(45:09):
performance that included Mickey Mouse himself. Than in nineteen eighty five,
we saw a show that had just about everything. They
really just threw everything at the wall and to see
what's stuck.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Yeah, and they learned that there is a law of
diminishing returns for variety shows that kicks in, especially when
you're a Matroshka dol format You're a show within a show,
you know what I mean, And it's important for them
to remember that. As the eighties wrap up and as
the super Bowl is getting its stadium sea legs, it
(45:45):
becomes more and more popular, and the traditional halftime show
becomes less and less popular because it's the same old thing.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
I've heard somebody play this song, I know that marching
band this.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
I've seen people dressed up in furry type costumes, you know,
prancing around the fields.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
Yeah, a hot air balloon hitting the stands whatever. We
weirdly have that at home.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Been there, done that? No, it's true. And at this
point too, the game itself is really starting to hit
it stride and becoming massively popular, starting to approach that
level of sensation that we know it today. But the
halftime show just wasn't keeping up with that. So we
can probably pause right now, just before we get to
(46:30):
the modern super Bowl halftime show.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Yes, yeah, and the madness that will ensue you. So
join us later this week for part two of the
history of the super Bowl halftime show. We want we
can't wait for your explorer with us, folks, We've got
you right to the right to the cusp as Nola's
saying of the more modern celebrations, Big big thanks to
(46:53):
Max Williams, our super producer, Big big thanks of course
to aj Bahamas. Jacob's big thanks to who's the football
team that needs the most like empathy? And you'll get
them next time?
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Kind of the angel buffle built.
Speaker 3 (47:10):
They lost four Super Bowls in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
All right, Well the Angels are a baseball seven and
I was thinking of angels in the outfield. Surely there's
a football equivalent.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Yeah, okay, yeah, Bud Golden receiver, and and thank you
and good luck to the Buffalo Williams out there.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Can you also give huge thanks to Jonathan Strickland, the quiztor,
who quite often back in the day on his podcast
Tex Stuff would would talk about the hyper Bowl meaning hyperbole,
but as the hyper Bowl hyper Bowl would have been
a pretty cool futuristic name for a game like this.
Also stand by Mega Bowl.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yeah it's still gonna happen. He's a big, big taste
to the quiztor, Big big taste to Alex Williams who
composed this slap and Bob who else know who else?
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Christopher House you know us and he's Jeff Coats here
in spirit. Ben, thank you, thank you for co authoring
this amazing two part brief with our buddy and super
producer Max Williams. This has been a romp and I
look forward to getting into part two next.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Yeah, this is the cool part, folks.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
So as we call it, as.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
We call it a day, we like to take a
little break in between these What do you think our
halftime show is just just for the three of us
at our pets.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Well, I'm gonna go have a nice coffee and I
am going to do some strange statue reconstruction. Love that.
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(48:47):
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.