Super Bowl pre-game and halftime festivities a la 'Semi-Tough'

[Oeditpus Rex]

(The book; not the unforgivably cocked-up excuse for a movie.)



According to Shoat, here's what was going to happen before the game:

Several hundred trained birds — all painted red, white and blue — would be released from cages somewhere and they would fly over the stadium in the formation of an American flag.

As the red, white and blue birds flew over, Boke Kellum, the Western TV star, would recite the Declaration of Independence.

Next would be somebody dressed up like Mickey Mouse and somebody else dressed up like Donald Duck joining the actress Camille Virl in singing "God Bless America."

And right in the middle of the singing, here would come this Air Force cargo plane to let loose fifty sky divers who would come dropping into the coliseum.

Each sky diver would be dressed up in the regional costume of a state, and he would land in the coliseum in the order in which his state became a United State.

When all this got cleaned up, Shoat said, United States Senator Pete Rozelle, the ex-commissioner of the NFL who invented the Super Bowl, would be driven around the stadium in the car that won last year's Indianapolis 500. At the wheel would be Lt. Commander Flip Slammer, the fifteenth astronaut to walk on the moon.

Riding along behind the Indy car, Shoat said, would be two men on horses. One would be Commissioner Bob Cameron on Lurking Funk, the thoroughbred which won last year's Kentucky Derby. And on the other horse, Podna (the horse Boke Kellum pretends to ride in his TV series), would be the current president of CBS, a guy named Woody Snider.

Finally, Shoat said, the teams would be introduced and two thousand crippled and maimed soldiers on crutches and in wheel chairs and on stretchers would render the "Star-Spangled Banner."

...

Shoat said it was too bad we would all have to miss it but the Super Bowl halftime show was going to be even more spectacular than the pregame show.

He said there would be a water ballet in the world's largest inflatable swimming pool, a Spanish fiesta, a Hawaiian luau, a parade stressing the history of the armored tank, a sing-off between all the glee clubs of all the military academies, and an actual World War I dogfight in the sky with the Red Baron's plane getting blown to pieces.

The final event of the halftime, he said, would be an induction into the pro football hall of fame of about twenty stud hosses out of the past, including our own Tucker Frederickson, the vice-president of DDD and F. United States Senator Pete Rozelle would preside, Shoat said, along with Camille Virl, the actress, and Jack Whitaker, the CBS announcer. When the induction ceremony was over, Shoat said, then Rozelle and Whitaker and Camille Virl would lead the inductees in singing a parody on the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which was written by somebody in the league office. The title of it, he said, was "The Game Goes Marching On," and he understood it might make some people cry.

Shoat said CBS had hoped the whole stadium would join in the singing, since all 92,000 people would have been given a printed copy of the lyrics.

The last thing in the halftime would be some more birds. While the stadium was singing this song, Shoat said, several thousand more painted-up birds would be released and they would fly in such a way overhead that the likeness of Vince Lombardi, the great old coach, would appear.



Dan Jenkins was quite the prophet. :D