ABSTRACT
The halftime show at Super Bowl XXV was an inaugural moment in the marriage of spectator sport and warfare. The 1991 contest between the Buffalo Bills and the New York Giants got underway twelve days into Operation Desert Storm. Fans underwent extensive searches, sat among anti-terrorist squadrons, and found small American flags distributed on each seat at Tampa Stadium. An F-14 Tomcat fighter plane fly-over and shots of soldiers in uniform holding flags from various coalition countries accompanied a heart-stopping rendition of the national anthem by Whitney Houston. For the home audience, the halftime show began with an ABC report on Iraq consisting of four segments hosted by Peter Jennings. The last of these, entitled “Gulf War: The Super Bowl,” tied spectatorship to “support” by explaining that the game was a morale booster for those American soldiers watching in the Middle East. ABC returned to the onfield halftime show in time for a version of “Wind Beneath My Wings” dedicated to the troops and sung by 2,000 children in front of a Disney World-style castle. During an instrumental break, a pre-recorded message from George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush lit the Jumbo-Tron urging viewers to remember the men and women who “protect our freedom in the Persian Gulf and around the world.” Yellow ribbons, flags, and a rendition of “America the Beautiful” filled out the performance, ending with a wistful transition from announcer Brent Musberger: “Dawn is now breaking over the Persian Gulf and some of our fighting men and women have been watching this Super Bowl throughout the night, and our hearts go out to them. Now for the second half . . .” 1 Later in the year, the Phoenix Cardinals’ inaugural preseason game boasted a halftime show with 750 servicepersons, Humvees, Apache helicopters, a Patriot missile, M-60 machine gun emplacements set behind sandbags, an ejection seat demonstration, and more. A former POW from the Gulf War presided over the coin flip, a ritual that the New York Giants later repeated.2
