by Olu Oshewa ’16, Staff Writer.

The Super Bowl is the largest football game of the year, as the best teams from both the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference compete for football’s most prized award. Even people with limited football knowledge recognize that the Super Bowl is the most important game in the NFL.  However, as technology improves, more and more people are often starting to watch the most important football game not out of interest in the sport, but for the commercials and the halftime show. Performances such as the halftime show and the national anthem are an integral part of why the Super Bowl reaches such a large and diverse audience. These performances can appeal to a wider group of viewers and add to the overall grandiose nature of the event.

In the earlier years of the Super Bowl, the halftime show was very basic, usually featuring a college marching band.  However, in the years since the mid-1980s, the Super Bowl has given performers a forum to perform in front of millions of individuals watching this spectacle from home. New Kids on the Block and Michael Jackson were two of the first big name performers to step onto the Super Bowl stage. These performances have varied in genre including pop, rock, classic rock, country, hip hop, rap, blues, and soul.

Over the years, these performances have become bigger and flashier.  Technology and stage production have turned these halftime shows into incredible spectacles. Bruno Mars headlined the Super Bowl XLVIII halftime show performance, which was the most watched halftime show in history with 115.3 million viewers. Furthermore it is listed in the Guinness World Records as the largest television audience for a Super Bowl halftime performance. Past performers include Madonna in 2012 and Beyoncé in 2013.

Before the game even starts, however, artists relish the opportunity to perform the national anthem at the Super Bowl.  The “Star Spangled Banner” has been performed at every Super Bowl along with “America the Beautiful” in the more recent years. This year’s performer of the national anthem was Renee Fleming and Queen Latifah performed “America the Beautiful” with the New Jersey Youth Chorus. Laura Boyman ‘16 was lucky enough to have the opportunity to perform with Queen Latifah as a member of the New Jersey Youth Chorus. Past performers of the national anthem include well-known artists such as Beyoncé, Jordin Sparks, and Christina Aguilera.

Have the grandeur of these performances overshadowed the athletic focus of the event? One person described this most recent Super Bowl as a “concert with a football game in the background.”  This response supports the theory that these performances are a large reason the Super Bowl draws such a large audience. Another argument is that the importance of these performances depends on the quality of the game. For example, in this years’ Super Bowl the Denver Broncos were completely beaten by the Seattle Seahawks.  This game was the opposite of the nail-biter that everyone was really looking forward to watching. The best football games are the ones where each team is really fighting for that winning touchdown. The lack of entertainment from the football game itself may be the reason the halftime show was so popular this year. The Super Bowl has always had an athletic focus, but some of the spotlight has shifted from the football game to artistic performances.