When Super Bowl Halftime Performances Weren't Freak Shows

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University of Arizona Symphonic Marching Band, 1967

The first Super Bowl halftime performance in 1967 featured two university bands performing the "Liberty Bell" marching set by John Phillip Sousa. If you have a few minutes, watch some or all of the video at the end of this post, and reflect on how the culture has changed.

It's really quite stunning.

Of course, in 1967, rock-and-roll and the "sexual revolution" were in full swing. But the "counter-culture" was just that. Most of the country was still very square. Listen to the announcer in that video. You can almost feel the collar and tie around his neck.

Today, Lady Gaga - the headliner for Super Bowl LI - isn't the counter-culture. She is the culture.

Carol Channing, 1970

So when did things change? Or to put it another way and focus on the Super Bowl, when did the halftime performance become such a freak show?

The answer may surprise you.

It was actually only quite recently.

Wikipedia has a detailed and fascinating historical rundown here.

For more than half of it's existence, until the early 1990's or arguably even until 2001, Super Bowl halftimes were quite G-rated.

Up with People, 1980

Until 1990 it was mainly marching bands, Disney tributes and Hollywood personalities from another age, like George Burns or Mickey Rooney.

The 1990's brought in soul and country music - Gloria Estefan, Stevie Wonder, Clint Black and so on. The edgiest acts were New Kids on the Block and Michael Jackson.

Super Bowl XXXV in 2001 was pretty clearly when things changed decisively.

XXXIV in 2000 had featured Phil Collins in a Disney produced salute to the "Tapestry of Nations." XXXV in 2001 featured Aerosmith, 'N Sync, Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige and Nelly, and was produced by MTV as a tribute to "The Kings of Rock and Pop."

New Kids on the Block, 1991

From then on, there was no going back. "A Salute to Louis Armstrong," marching bands outlining the fifty states and Doc Severinsen had given way to "Bootylicious," costume malfunctions and Madonna.

Do not misunderstand what I'm trying to say here. Some of the modern rock-and-rollers are quite talented. And, yes, I actually like a few of them. At the same time, some of the pre-2001 music was pretty bad. The quasi-Christian "education" troop, Up with People was fairly widely panned. Even so, they managed to perform in five halftime shows in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

I'm not talking about the quality of the music so much as, for lack of a better term, the moral tone.

If that makes me sound like an Up with People groupie, so be it.

Aerosmith and Britney Spears, 2001

But back to Lady Gaga.

To steal a line from a set of rock and roll lyrics ironically written in 1967, Lady Gaga is a pornographic priestess.

She would probably call that a compliment.

You think you can just turn her off.

But you can't. Lady Gaga is the culture. And even if you go live in a bunker, your kids will probably smuggle in children's cartoon DVDs featuring rap soundtracks or sexual innuendos.

I don't know what the answer is.

Lady Gaga, 2017

He Wouldn't Have Agreed with Francis

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Pope Francis just released another video message, this time, if you can believe it, on the Super Bowl:

Great sporting events like today’s Super Bowl are highly symbolic, showing that it is possible to build a culture of encounter and a world of peace.

By participating in sport, we are able to go beyond our own self interest – and in a healthy way – we learn to sacrifice, to grow in fidelity and respect the rules.

May this year’s Super Bowl be a sign of peace, friendship and solidarity to the world.

Thank you!

Some of this is of course unobjectionable. Indeed, Pope Pius X said something very similar about the Olympics.

But it's one of the unfortunate aspects of the Francis phenomenon that many of us grit our teeth and want to resist pretty much anything he utters these days.

I'm not saying that's particularly mature, but there it is.

So when I heard about the Pope's Super Bowl speech, it made me want to spike a catcher and then beat up the umpire when he called me out.

As most American readers know, the snarling figure in the title photograph, and the man "sliding" into the catcher, above, is Ty Cobb - arguably the greatest baseball player who ever lived.

Cobb had a deserved reputation, as a player, for being tough and mean, very often to the point of violence. Or as Cobb himself put it:

Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.

Cobb fought other players. He ran into the stands to fight heckling fans. In his off-hours he fought hotel elevator operators.

Here is a description of one of Cobb's many fights:

It was the bloodiest fight I ever saw in baseball. Ty was a bit too fast for Evans. One of Cobbs' blows split Evans' left eyebrow, and another literally parted the flesh like a jagged dull knife would have done, on Evans' right cheekbone. Ty eventually knocked Evans down, got on top of him and was banging his head on the hard surface. It was at this time that a burly groundkeeper for the Washington club, who looked like he would tip the scale at about 230 pounds and probably could have bested either Ty or Billy (Evans), reached down and pulled Ty off of Billy and very authoritatively told them, "The fight is over, boys."

Billy Evans was an umpire.

Recent research has shown that Ty Cobb's reputation for nastiness off the field was to a large extent exaggerated or even partly a result of outright falsification (by the sportswriter Al Stump, among others). Long branded a fierce bigot (he was from Georgia and seemed to have a different ethnic slur ready for every one of his opponents), he actually was an early and forceful advocate for breaking baseball's color barrier. And his grandson described him as a kind and generous man in his later life.

But you didn't want to be a second baseman, third baseman or catcher (Cobb occasionally stole all three bases in succession) on the receiving end of one of his slides.

Call it Cobb's version of the "culture of encounter."

Ty Cobb died in 1961.

May he rest in peace.

The Barkley Marathons: A Legendary Race and a Fascinating Movie

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Gary Cantrell

The Barkley Marathons, one of the world's most grueling ultramarathon trail races, takes place every spring in Frozen Head State Park, Tennessee. An award-winning documentary on the event - Barkley Marathons: The Race that Eats It's Young - was released in 2014. For the fun of it, I've bracketed some facts on the race and the movie with the words from an old Appalachian Bluegrass song. This version of I Feel Jesus was written in 1962 by Frances Reedy and recently recorded by the contemporary folk duo, Anna and Elizabeth. It very fittingly ends the film.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

• Barkley Marathons was co-founded and designed by trail runner Gary "Lazarus Lake" Cantrell in the early 1980's.
• Cantrell claims to have gotten the idea for the race when Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray famously escaped from a Tennessee maximum security prison in 1977. Ray kept searchers looking for 54 hours but only travelled eight miles.
• Cantrell gets hate mail from people thinking he is a James Earl Ray fan. Actually,  he thought Ray was a wimp for only getting eight miles. He felt participants in his race could do much better.
• One bit of the race actually follows a sewer/stream that travels under the prison.
• An "ultramarathon" is any race longer than marathon distance - 26.2 miles.
• The Barkley distance is at least 100 miles. Some think it's closer to 125. No one knows for sure and Cantrell changes the route slightly each year.
• These 100-125 miles are run through remote Tennessee woods and mountains.

It's Holy Ghost power shut up in my bones. I've got the one desire to make heaven my own.

• The race is five loops of 20-25 miles each.
• You have 60 hours to finish all five loops.
• Finishing racers run the equivalent of two ascents and two descents of Mount Everest.
• Out of 1000 competitors in 30 years, only 14 have ever finished.
• In some years, no one finishes.
• It took ten years for anyone to finish.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

• The first two loops are clockwise. Depending on the circumstances, this means one is probably run in the light and the other is probably run in the dark
• The second two loops are counter-clockwise.
• The first place runner (if any) after four loops decides whether to run the last loop clockwise or counter-clockwise. The second place runner (if any) must run in the opposite direction.

Well, it'll make you happy, it'll set you free, It'll make you love your neighbor, it's a work of charity.

• In the film, Cantrell comes across as a sort of benevolent/sadistic Santa Claus figure.
• He has created a unique mechanism for entering the race. Anyone can apply by paying a $1.60 application fee. But you must also write an essay and fill out numerous forms. The criteria for selection is not transparent.
• Only 40 per year are selected.
• One of them is designated the "human sacrifice" - someone who Cantrell feels has absolutely no chance of completing even one loop, even though they might otherwise appear to be in good shape. He's always right. The "human sacrifice" shown in the movie was a Navy Seal.
• If you're chosen, you receive a "letter of condolence."
• At check in-time, you must bring a license plate and a "gift" for Cantrell. The gift has varied from a white shirt, to socks, to a flannel shirt - whatever Cantrell thinks he needs that year.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

• The race has no preset start time. Rather Cantrell blows a conch shell at a surprise point within a 12 hour period. That signals that the race will begin within one hour.
• The actual race begins when Cantrell, at the start line, lights a cigarette.
• Very few even finish more than one loop.
• If you finish three loops, it's called a "fun run."
• As each competitor stops or gives up, a designated trumpeter plays "Taps."

It's resurrection power, shut up in my bones. It's got the same power to raise Jesus from the tomb.

• There is no chip timing. GPS is banned. You only have a compass and a map. Every few miles in the loop, there is a pre-placed vintage paperback in a plastic bag. You must tear a page out of each book (corresponding to your race number) to prove you have stayed on the course. After each loop you give the probably crumpled pages to Cantrell who verifies them by lining them up on a stone wall.
• The legs of most competitors are usually completely bloodied by a particularly hostile strain of Tennessee bramble.
• After each loop, you can eat, rest, tape your blisters or sleep. almost no one sleeps (if they get that far). The leading runners usually spend no more than a half hour "in camp."
• The course record, set by Brett Maune in 2011, is 52:03:08 - an average speed of approximately 2 miles per hour.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

• "Barkley" is a Tennessee farmer and friend of Cantrell. He is amused that the race is named after him.
• The movie is absolutely brilliant. I highly recommend it, whether you are a running enthusiast or not. It chronicles the 2012 race in which there were three finishers - a record.

Ooh ooh ooh, my my my, I feel Jesus shut up in my bones.

Here are a few trailers for the film - the full version of which is currently available on Netflix - as well as a short additional video featuring the mischievously charming Cantrell discussing why no woman has ever completed the race (although a number of women do compete every year), and a YouTube audio clip of I Feel Jesus.