The Super Bowl halftime show that changed Super Bowl shows forever

The Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event in the country. There’s no debating that. Whether it’s the biggest sporting event in the world is up for debate, but when it comes to the biggest mix of sport, entertainment it gets no bigger than Super Sunday.

Record audience for Kendrick, Super Bowl LIX

Just this year, a record 127 million people tuned it to watch the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs a month ago in New Orleans. Those who tuned in were either Philly fans, KC fans, football fans or people tuning into the halftime show.

This year Kendrick Lamar performed at the break of Super Bowl LIX, and highlighted the performance with his hit song “They Not Like Us.” Whether you liked it or not, you still watched. The halftime show has become almost as must see as the game over the years but that hasn’t always been the case.

If you look back at Super Bowls back in the early days of the league and it’s nothing more than something you might see at a high school football halftime. There were a lot of marching bands, and maybe someone on horse back. One time someone was even flying around on a jet pack back in the 60s or 70s, but that’s about as spectacular as it got.

From marching bands to Michael Jackson

That all changed in the early 1990s. Super Bowl XXVI featured the Washington Redskins and the Buffalo Bills and the halftime show was a couple of ice skaters doing a performance to promote the Winter Olympics with Gloria Estefan singing in the background. Estfan was a star, but she didn’t draw a crowd like the stars of now.

The 90’s skit show “In Living Color” was in it’s prime and they cashed in on the opportunity to “steal” some of the viewers who had like the players on the field, taken a break from the game. They made a show for their network FOX which was specifically aired during halftime of the Big Game on which was being broadcast on CBS.

They swayed 28.9 million people of the 79.6 million that tuned in to watch the skit show that included creator Keenen Ivory Wayans, Jamie Foxx, Jim Carrey with a performance of “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd. The next year, the NFL had Michael Jackson do the halftime show and the rest is history.

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