Springsteen For the Super Bowl

Sure won't be playing "Born In The U.S.A." unless he wants his head handed to him by all those drunk flag-hugging football fans...

By Fred Mills

Selling out or buying in? While being tapped to play the halftime show at the Super Bowl is certainly considered prestigious, over the years it's also become a source of snarky derision for a lot of music fans.

Quick, give yourself this little test: what songs, and/or what particular staging spectacle, did Tom Petty (who performed the honors this year in front of 148 million couch potatos), the Stones, Sir Paul, Prince, Janet Jackson and U2 do at their Super Bowl slots? If the only one you can reliably recall is Janet Jackson ("Bob, I'll take ‘Janet Jackson's tit' for $100...") from 2004, then you probably understand what we're saying.

At any rate Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will be the 2009 Super Bowl entertainment. He'll hit the stage sometime during the evening of Feb. 1 in Tampa, and depending on who the match-up comes down to, he'll probably play "Promised Land," "Born to Run" or "You Can Look But You Better Not Touch." Or maybe not....

Can we have a Boss bobblehead?