“Recruits, click on the picture. You could have one of these if you come to UT.”

As you ease into your favorite chair or couch to watch Super Bowl XL this evening (5:18 p.m., CST) and its featured entertainers, Aretha Franklin and the Rolling Stones, did you realize that it was only 13 years ago when Super Bowl XXVII in 1993 featured O.J. Simpson flipping the coin during the pre-game coin toss and Michael Jackson performing at halftime with “a choir of 3,500 local Los Angeles area children joining Jackson as he sang his single ‘Heal The World'”?
My, how times change!
But if you really want a refresher on how times change, check out this Anthony Lewis/NY Times review of Taylor Branch’s third segment of his fine trilogy about the social revolution that occurred in America during Martin Luther King’s voting rights and desegregation movement in the late 1950’s and 1960’s, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 (Simon & Schuster 2006). Lewis describes the simplicity of Dr. King’s purpose in pursuing the movement:

In Alabama, Mississippi and large parts of other states in the Deep South [at that time], the [Constitutional right to vote without discrimination] was a myth for blacks. They were threatened, abused, even murdered if they tried to register or vote; they often lost their homes or their jobs. Armed white mobs menaced them.
King believed that if Americans outside the South were aware of its brutal racism ó as few then were ó they would want to end it. The violent response to nonviolent protest made the brutality plain. What Americans read in newspapers and saw on television shocked them, and jump-started the political process. Meaningful civil rights legislation made it past Senate filibusters at last.

But Branch’s book also reminds us that King’s movement revealed that racial discrimination was not confined to the South:

Chicago dramatized the reality of antiblack feelings in the North. Marches organized by King to protest segregated housing and unequal government benefits [in Chicago] were met with mob taunts and rocks. “Burn them like Jews!” one white group shouted at the marchers. Branch concludes that “the violence against Northern demonstrations cracked a beguiling, cultivated conceit that bigotry was the province of backward Southerners.”
In 1965, he notes, Mary Travers of the trio Peter, Paul and Mary kissed Harry Belafonte on the cheek at a rally. CBS television, which was showing the rally, was besieged by protesting callers, and took the rally off the air for 90 minutes. In the border state of Kentucky, the famous basketball coach Adolph Rupp kept his University of Kentucky team all white. He complained of calls from the university president, “That son of a bitch wants me to get some niggers in here.” A little-noted team from Texas Western, with five black players starting, upset Kentucky in the 1966 championship game ó a story told just now in the movie “Glory Road.” Only slowly, after that, did the bar on black athletes break down in the South. Many people watching college sports on television today would not have dreamed that such a policy ever existed.

As noted in this earlier post about that Texas Western team, those were very different times. America has come a long ways in its race relations since then, but we still have a long ways to go, and much of the impetus for continued progress is the memory of those different times not so very long ago.

Earlier posts here and here reported on developments in Texas A&M University’s lawsuit this week against the Super Bowl XL-bound Seattle Seahawks to enjoin the Seahawks from infringing on A&M’s 12th Man trademark. The latest development is that the Seahawks have removed the lawsuit from the Aggies’ homefield of Brazos County District Court to the reasonably neutral venue of federal court in Houston.
Not wanting to appear heavy-handed, A&M released the following statement to the media over the controversy:

“Texas A&M University certainly has no ill will towards the Seattle Seahawks; in fact we have Aggies on the team and coaching staff and we congratulate them on their splendid season leading up to Sunday’s Super Bowl. However, we have the responsibility and legal obligation to protect the university’s trademarks, which in this instance is the 12th Man. The 12th Man is one of our most treasured traditions, recognized by most as one of the most compelling in collegiate athletics. We have asked the Seahawks’ management to cease and desist promoting use of the 12th Man trademark. Such letters were submitted in 2004 and 2005 requesting their compliance, but our requests have not been honored. . . ”
“Texas A&M has done everything in its power over the last 2 years to bring quiet closure to this situation. Our hope is that the Seahawks’ organization will recognize our federal trademark.”
“Finally, just for the record, A&M sincerely hopes that the Steelers beat the hell out of the Seahawks in the Super Bowl on Sunday.”

O.K., I confess. I added that last paragraph. ;^)

Kyle Field, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.

Qwest Field, Home of the Seattle Seahawks, Seattle, Washington.

It’s demoralizing enough for followers of the Texas A&M University football program that the Aggie football team has fallen on hard times, but now they have to deal with the theft of their sacred 12th Man tradition:

The Seattle Seahawks are facing the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl, but they have an off-the-field battle brewing with Texas A&M.
School officials are upset with the Seahawks’ use of the “12th Man” theme to recognize their fan support. A&M has legal claims to the “12th Man” moniker, a school tradition that dates to the 1920s.
Texas A&M contends the 12th man lives at Kyle Field, not in Seattle.
The Seahawks have celebrated their fans as a “12th Man” since the 1980s, when they used to turn the now-demolished Kingdome into one of the NFL’s loudest venues. . . .
A&M has twice registered trademarks for “The 12th Man” label — in 1990 and 1996 — that include entertainment services, “namely organizing and conducting intercollegiate sporting events,” and products, such as caps, T-shirts, novelty buttons and jewelry. . . .
[A&M Athletics Director] Bill Byrne said A&M has contacted the Seahawks about the issue. He said he wrote the Chicago Bears and Buffalo Bills in the past about halting their 12th man themes once the university made them aware of the trademark registrations. Byrne said Seattle, though, “has been slow-rolling us.”

The Aggies reduced to a post-season lawsuit rather than a post-season bowl game? Well, at least some folks are smiling.
Update: A&M filed a lawsuit in Brazos County on Monday to enjoin the Seahawks from infringing on the university’s 12th Man trademark. Home field advantage — Aggies.

Well, the market for tickets to Super Bowl XL isn’t doing so badly after all (previous post here):

There are 132 suites at Ford Field, ranging considerably in size and price.
TicketsNow.com, which connects ticket buyers and sellers, advertised Monday a 40-person luxury suite on the 40-yard-line for ó are you sitting? ó $261,000. Another Web site priced a box at $315,000. The median home price in the Detroit area last year was about $169,000.

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen for the link.

Yesterday’s league championship games decided that the Steelers and the Seahawks will tangle in Super Bowl XL, but it remains decidedly unclear whether this year’s big game in Detroit will be the hot ticket of Super Bowls past.
As noted in previous posts here and here, last year’s Super Bowl host city Jacksonville was ill-equipped to handle the logistical demands of handling the Super Bowl. Now, as Phil Miller notes in this post, Detroit is getting even a worse reaction from from prospective Super Bowl attendees than Jacksonville:

With the NFL’s first cold-weather Super Bowl in 14 years, and only the third one in the event’s 40-year run, just three weeks away, many of the firms that arrange Super Bowl hospitality trips report that clients are not as eager to go this year.
The tepid response is largely due to the expected cold weather, with the average high termperature in February in Detroit at 36 degrees. That combined with the city’s lackluster reputation, have led some clients to depart for other locales such as Vegas and the Caribbean for viewing parties, or simply taking a pass and booking early for the 2007 game in south Florida.

Well, so much for building a stadium to get a Super Bowl to promote the city!
That’s from the latest issue of the Sports Business Journal. The article starts out by mentioning that Dan Marino and John Elway will be raising money for their charities during Super Bowl week – in Las Vegas. Ouch!

Speaking of football, here is a nice story about a couple of football fans who have a special interest in the upcoming Super Bowl.

And I thought that Texans took football seriously:

Bettis Fumble Coincides With Fan’s Heart Attack (WTAE-TV)
The excitement of the Steelers taking on the Indianapolis Colts proved too much for one fan on Sunday.
With about 1 minute remaining in the game, Colts linebacker Gary Brackett hit Steelers running back Jerome Bettis on the Indianapolis goal line and forced a fumble — one that caused a man to go into cardiac arrest at Cupka’s bar, in the South Side, Sheldon Ingram said.
The firemen performed CPR on [the victim] and the called the paramedics, . . .
[The victim] was later revived with a defibrillator and taken to UMPC Presbyterian Hospital.

Following a weekend in which University of Texas alums continue to bask in the glow of their university’s first National Championship football team in a generation, I pass along the following items of interest:

The flat-out cleverest piece on the UT-USC National Championship game is this hilarious Bill Simmons/ESPN Page 2 column entitled “Welcome Back, Coach Fredo.” Don’t worry, Longhorn fans. Simmons is talking about USC coach Pete Carroll with that “Coach Fredo” tag. Hat tip to Kevin Whited for the link.

As expected, the star of UT’s National Championship team — QB Vince Young of Houston’s Madison High School —
announced on Sunday that he is ending his UT career and declaring himself eligible for the NFL Draft later this year. A collective sigh of relief could be heard from the eleven Big 12 coaches other than Longhorn coach Mack Brown.

Speaking of the NFL Draft, corporate legal expert Stephen Bainbridge provides a forum for discussing who the Texans should select as the first pick in the upcoming draft. One commenter posted the following football/corporate law question regarding the recent Texans-49’ers “Reggie Bush Bowl“:

Just a thought on the football game between the 49ers and the Texans. If the team was a corporation, would the Texans have a duty to lose the game in order to secure the number one pick? Winning the game is really not a benefit to the organization itself. Curious about your thoughts.

Another favored former Longhorn QB — Major Applewhite — may be the last offensive coordinator of the Rice University football program before the university downgrades its football program from NCAA Division I-A. New Rice head coach Todd Graham is employing young assistant coaches to help him attempt to revive the program — the average age of the assistants who he has hired to date is just under 33 years old.

The star-crossed football career of former Texas Tech running back Bam Morris — fresh off a prolonged stint in Leavenworth Federal Prison — took another interesting turn as the Orlando Predators of the Arena Football League hired Morris to play running back for the team. Morris was the top running back in college football during the 1993 season.

Finally, although football is a dangerous activity, it’s nothing compared to this one.

The University of Texas Longhorns, National Champions!
It’s taken me until 9 a.m. the morning after the game just to recover enough to pass along my thoughts.
In short, the game was hugely entertaining, if not particularly well-played in all respects. The first quarter was just kind of an all-around mess, Texas owned the second quarter, the third quarter turned into a fist fight between two heavyweights who could not defend themselves, and then Vince Young simply picked up his Texas team in the last six minutes of the fourth quarter and refused to let them lose.
It was truly a game for the ages and a perfect example of the reason that I prefer college football to the NFL.
By the way, don’t miss the Austin American-Statesman’s photo gallery containing a measly 143 photos from the Rose Bowl game.