Bruce Almighty: Was Springsteen A Super Bowl Hero, Or A Goat?

For a guy who kept saying he knows nothing about football, Bruce Springsteen had a pretty good Super Bowl: If his halftime set wasn’t as spectacular as Santonio Holmes’s tiptoe catches to win the game for the Steelers, at least Springsteen didn’t leave the field in shame, like Dominique Cromartie-Rodgers of the Cardinals, whose game jersey should have just read PWNED.
 
The song selection wasn’t exactly stunning: Did you think Springsteen was going to devote his twelve-minute slot to “Wild Billy’s Circus Story”? “Born To Run” was inevitable, “Glory Days” (with football-revised lyrics) was obvious, and he had to play something from his new album, so better “Working On A Dream” than “Queen Of The Supermarket” or, God forbid, “Outlaw Pete.” That leaves “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” as the only minor surprise – and given the song’s lyrical focus on saxophonist Clarence Clemons, and Clemons’ stature as a former semi-pro football player (as well as the lone black member of the E Street Band), even that pick makes sense to Monday-morning quarterbacks.
 
Hey NBC, we know you’re trying to act all MTV because you have a rock star for your halftime show instead of Up With People (who played at Super Bowls X, XIV, XVI and XX) but does that mean you have to cut to a different camera every .3 seconds? That brief glimpse of Patti Scialfa at the beginning – did she really look just like Carmela Soprano? It seemed like Bruce had half of Asbury Park onstage with him, and it would have been nice to take an actual head count.
 
Springsteen is, among many other things, the Steven Spielberg of classic rock, with a rare instinct for how to move a large audience. On a long Sunday that’s full of excess—too many ads, too much talking and hyperbole, too many predictions and guest appearances, too many penalties—Springsteen kept up the frantic pace of a no-huddle offense drill. And best of all, there was no nipple slip from Little Steven.