The NFL wants you to watch the game on the field, but sometimes the most memorable things about the Super Bowl are incidental to the game. The media fanfare, halftime show, and colorful cast of hangers-on make for endless possibilities for moments the NFL would rather we forget.
The Super Bowl has given us some bizarre moments and wild off-field stories over the past 57 years. Here are some of the most memorable Super Scandals of Super Bowls past.
Yeah... this upset a few people.
Prince’s 2007 halftime show was an all-timer but it didn’t come without controversy. In the set’s grand finale, the eccentric rocker played “Purple Rain” in a Miami monsoon. And during a guitar solo, a giant white sheet cast a shadow over Price and his… guitar. Which looked a lot like a… just take a look for yourself.
The Super Bowl is an event that takes months, years even, to plan. But in 2013, a power outage in the Superdome suspended play for 34 minutes. I mean, the lights go out? In a Super Bowl? Like me, Ray Lewis was in on the conspiracy.
“I’m not gonna accuse nobody of nothing — because I don’t know facts,” Lewis said after playing in the game. “But you’re a zillion-dollar company, and your lights go out? No. No way.”
The blackout helped Colin Kaepernick and the San Francisco 49ers climb back into the game, but it was a little too late. Ravens held on to win 34-31.
It’s 2009. “Pandemic” isn’t a part of your vocabulary yet and the Cardinals are actually good. So you invite the whole Arizona family to your Tucson pad to watch the big game. Grandma, grandpa, the kids, everyone has to watch the Cardinals in their first Super Bowl appearance. This is must-see TV!
So you’re watching a tight game and, in the fourth quarter, Larry Fitzgerald breaks off a 64-yard touchdown. The Cardinals go up 23-20 with 2:37 left in the game. All eyes are on the TV. Then, without warning, a woman starts unzipping a man’s pants on the TV. Cover your eyes, children! The clip only lasted for 37 seconds in just a handful of Comcast households in Tucson, but it was enough for the FBI and Marana police to take Frank Tanori Gonzalez into custody “on suspicion of fraud and computer tampering.”
After the game, Comcast offered $10 credits to their 80,000 local subscribers.
Oh, and the Cardinals ended up losing that Super Bowl 27-23.
Raiders Pro Bowl center Barret Robbins disappeared a day before Super Bowl XXXVII, worrying teammates and family members. Years later, he told Real Sports he went to a party in Tijuana instead of suiting up for the big game.
“I was in a very bad state of mind at that point,” Robbins said. “In my mind, we had already won the Super Bowl and we were already celebrating.”
Robbins was diagnosed with depression in 1997 and has struggled with substance abuse for years. In 2012, he was released from prison after spending a year and a half at Dade Correctional Institute for his involvement in attacking three police officers.
Beyonce paid tribute to the Black Panthers in 2016 with a Black power salute and backup dancers dressed in Panther-esque clothing. Naturally, right-wing media was triggered. “You’re talking to middle America when you have the Super Bowl,” Rudy Guliani said on Fox and Friends a day after Super Bowl 50. “If you’re going to have entertainment, let’s have decent, wholesome entertainment and not use it as a platform to attack [police].”
Instead of showing you the Fox News clip, here’s Beyonce’s performance. Enjoy!
The Bart Starr Award was “created to honor the NFL player who best exemplifies outstanding character and leadership in the home, on the field and in the community.” And in 1999, the Bart Starr Award was given to Eugene Robinson the day before Super Bowl Sunday.
But on that Saturday night, the NFL’s great guy went out on the town and was arrested for soliciting a prostitute. According to the Washington Post, Robinson offered to pay an undercover police officer $40 for oral sex.
To make matters worse, Robinson’s entire family — wife and two kids — was there for the big game, and the ensuing media storm.
Before the ‘96 season, Brett Favre opened up about his struggles with alcohol and painkillers. That year, the NFL had an alcohol ban placed on the gunslinger but they privately loosened the rules two months before the big game.
On the Friday before Super Bowl XXXI, Favre was seen on Bourbon Street with a beer. He incessantly denied drinking in the week leading up to the game to cover his ass and the NFL’s. But later admitted to the AP that he “had a few drinks” two days before his one and only Super Bowl win.
Favre was also spotted dry heaving on the sideline before the game. The Packers said it was due to the flu.
M.I.A. was one of many artists who accompanied Madonna in the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show. But in her 18-second solo, the artist gave a middle finger to the cameras.
A month after the game, the No Fun League filed a claim with the American Arbitration Association requesting $1.5 million from the singer. Two years later, with the issues still unresolved, the NFL asked for $15.5 million from M.I.A.
In August 2014, the NFL settled with M.I.A. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The night before Super Bowl XXIII in 1989, Bengals fullback Stanley Wilson told some of his teammates that he had to leave to retrieve his playbook from his hotel room.
The next time he was seen by Bengals staff, he was in his room “in the bathtub naked, coked out of his mind.”
Wilson had been suspended in 1985 and 1987 for violating the NFL’s drug policy.
As a result of this Super Bowl incident, he was banned from the NFL for life.
A day after Super Bowl XXXIV, Ray Lewis was arrested in connection to a double murder case. Lewis was seen at the big game, not as a player but as a spectator. According to an investigation and witnesses, two people were stabbed outside an Atlanta nightclub early Monday morning.
Double murder charges against Lewis were later dropped but he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. But what happened that night remains unclear.
Yes, that wardrobe malfunction. In 2004, Justin Timberlake ripped part of Janet Jackson’s top, exposing her breast to millions. The incident literally created the phrase “wardrobe malfunction,” I kid you not.
After the game, CBS was fined $550,000 by the FCC. Janet Jackson also faced years of backlash while Timberlake’s career took off. He even hosted the Super Bowl halftime show in 2018. He finally quasi-apologized to Jackson in a public statement directed at both her and his ex, Britney Spears. “I understand that I fell short,” Timberlake said in an Instagram post, stating he “benefited from a system that condones misogyny and racism.”
Let’s be honest, even with the masking, this one never should have taken place during a global pandemic.