Re: Grammy Performers: Beyonce, Foo Fighters...and Michael Jackson(rumor)?
Jim Steeg is the sort of guy who has backup plans for his backup plans.
Think of him as a white-collar Mr. Fix-It, as handy with a cell phone as a plumber with a pipe wrench. For 25 years, Steeg, with his push-broom mustache and unassuming demeanor, was the man in charge of the biggest single-day party known to civilization. To say the Chargers executive vice president and chief operating officer helped boost the popularity of the Super Bowl is an understatement akin to calling the World Wide Web a notable innovation.
To appreciate the spectacle he helped create, and the depths from which he lifted it, consider the halftime entertainment for the last pre-Steeg Super Bowl, in 1979 in Miami: "Caribbean Carnival."
The show was a disaster. The engine powering a float garishly decorated as a boat died, Haitian musicians never arrived and a tarp intended to depict each Caribbean nation became entangled with a goalpost as it was rolled out. The show ended with Steeg, freshly hired by the NFL and there as a horrified observer, helping push the stranded float off the field.
Contrast that to 2005, Steeg's grand finale as Super Bowl ringmaster, when Paul McCartney was the featured performer. Previously, Steeg's Super Bowl productions had included such megastars as
Michael Jackson, U2, Aerosmith, Britney Spears and Diana Ross.
The template hasn't changed much since Steeg's departure. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are the halftime headliners for Sunday's Super Bowl in Glendale, Ariz., between the New England Patriots and New York Giants.
Mariah Carey will sing the national anthem.
The A-list entertainers, the Jumbotron replays, the elaborate stadium sound systems, the TV monitors installed in every nook and cranny, the customized banners flying from parking lot light poles, the postgame trophy presentation on the field, the Super Bowl logos stamped on the game balls, the uniformed ushers, the fireworks and the flyovers and the coin for the flip ---- everything right down to the nameplates above each players' locker are Steeg specials.
"I would never say that we really invented everything," said Steeg, 57, who joined the Chargers in 2005 and hasn't attended a Super Bowl since. "We adapted what we saw at other places and put it all together. Under (former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle) we were allowed to do a lot of experiments."
Most everything Steeg tried worked, although he admits some ideas were deemed too expensive (transistor radios given to every fan) and shows only marginal in quality (Up with People) to keep in the rotation. Just as important as Steeg's eye for innovation was his Midas touch in handling the event's inevitable ---- and innumerable ---- flare-ups.
"Problem solving, that's what he was great at," said Don Renzuilli, the NHL's senior vice president of events and entertainment who worked with Steeg for 10 years as the NFL's senior director of event operations. "There were always things popping up. It was an everyday occurrence.
"He knew everything about the game, down to the last detail, and that made it a lot easier."
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02/01/sports/nelson/22_36_231_31_08.txt
Anyone thinking MJ might single the national anthem as I read somewhere, is not going to happen as that spot goes to Mariah.
