Backstory: Even football is only rock 'n' roll

Clearly, sports and noise go hand in hand, observes Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University in New York. "Sports isn't about subtlety or nuance; it's about screaming. On the field and up in the stands. You're shouting at the field.

"Then," he explains, "we developed ways to augment the ways of watching sports by trying to control the crowd. The perception was a sporting event needed a soundtrack. Certain songs became intricately identified with a given team, [it was] sound as a branding device."

But why so loud? "You're in a stadium with 50,000 people, it's got to be loud," says Mr. Thompson. "They want this music to penetrate and prevail over all the other distracting stuff."

Increasingly, he adds, there's an attempt "to make the live experience like a TV show," and live sporting events get over-produced, with music the key element in that over-production.

The big question, he says, is "Is this event about the soundtrack or the game itself?"

For some, it's making a spectacle of a spectacle. "I'm in despair" over the booming music at sporting events, laments John Dizikes, a University of California, Santa Cruz historian and author of books on opera and sports.

"I can only do one thing well at a time," he says, "When I go to a game, I honestly find it distracting from the game itself that this dreadful thing is going on. It's not just the music; it's fantastically loud sound. Music is intrusive in that situation. Especially in baseball, where I want tranquility and peace, and here is this other thing which destroys that atmosphere."

Those days have gone away, just like Joltin' Joe DiMaggio.

The architects of rockification figure it's just sharp cross-marketing - appealing to youth through music - and keeping our attention from wandering. "It's meant to keep the crowd's spirits up," says Matt Ross, a sports analyst for BetUS, an online gaming company. "That's the importance of it. It varies from culture to culture. I saw a basketball game in Miami last spring with Miami Heat against the Toronto Raptors, and they had a DJ and two girls dancing. It was the first time I'd ever seen something like that and I was sort of taken aback wondering if it belonged there. But it's the culture of the NBA: they play music with hip-hop beats during games."

These beats dominate L.A. Lakers games; same with the Spurs in San Antonio.

But one pro sports executive - whose sport is not remiss about using music - suggests he's a little conflicted over music at pro basketball and hockey games. It's a diversionary tactic, he says, with an implied message of "don't look down on the court, it's about the music."

The Super Bowl is expected to draw 130 million US viewers. And they will apparently stay tuned for halftime: McCarthy cites surveys showing that 95 percent of the TV audience remains during halftime.

Some may even tune in specifically for the halftime event itself. Indeed, the Stones's huffing, puffing, strutting, and rocking is likely to pull from a broad TV-land demographic.

As to the Super Bowl show for the people in the Detroit stadium, the NFL reversed an earlier decision that the fan extras chosen to dance up front for the cameras couldn't be older than 45. Jagger, is 62 - does it really make sense to dis your own age group and worship at the altar of youth?

After halftime is over TV viewers will be returned to the battle royale and a deluge of cute, clever, mind-bogglingly expensive ads.

The folks in the stadium, they'll get the noise.

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