‘Super Bowl Experience’ Revives Echoes of Old LA Rams and Prince’s One-of-a-kind Halftime Performance – Orange County Register

The silence of a faint Los Angeles memory still lives somewhere deep in the circuit of my perennial synapses: Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 1970-something. With dad, a hot dog and a dream come true – watch Wendell Tyler run.

It’s Rams against someone – can’t remember who. But I can still remember the distant helmet skirmishes on the field, and my dad’s game-time symposium on how line umpires move the yardstick, and the markings on the pitch. about commercial breaks in the game.

Oh my gosh, time flies!

But the synapses were back in action this week during my impromptu visit to the LA Convention Center, where the NFL’s Super Bowl Experience – a weeklong exhibit on all things NFL – filled huge halls. If American football were an amusement park, this would be – or at least its predecessor, like a Travel Fair that showcases everything from the game’s history to interactive rides to counters. head to the players and their own personalities. Thousands of people will make a pilgrimage here this week ahead of Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium on Sunday.

I was there Monday to participate and cover an 11:15 a.m. news conference where Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was joining the Super Bowl Host Committee to celebrate the Super Bowl’s arrival in Los Angeles.

After explosive detection dogs checked the nooks and crannies of my modest hatchback, and I got past the heavily fortified security system, I got in. I tried my best, until I promptly missed the press conference – the victim of a credential glitch.

On my way home from a reporter’s notebook unfilled, my editor’s text message landed: “The public doesn’t get to experience the NFL today, does it? So you’ve got the freedom to roam? “

Shame on me.

He was right. I did. The place is basically empty, and I love to wander. The public wasn’t on Monday, so I basically had it to myself, along with a bunch of other media. And why let a day that goes by that I shop go to waste, right?

So I went back in, like a zombie, not really knowing whether I was going – or running – in.

I’m so glad I did. Out of everyone, I ran into James H. Williams, a young Southern California News Group sports journalist. Williams was on vacation, but went to the Convention Center with a writer friend to check it out. He’s also been wandering around a bit, but he has a more keen eye for the place, and in my eyes he’s become a tour guide through the cave “amusement park”. – the center of the NFL universe at the moment.

He puts everything in my perspective.

“There is a lot of history here,” he said. “I don’t know when the next one will be in LA. We already have the stadium here, so maybe that means we’ll have another one in the future. This is just something that I can’t give up. But if it’s 8 to 10 years before another Super Bowl in LA, it’s like the people say, ‘I wish I had gone to that one.’ I don’t want to regret. So I had to come see it, regardless. ”

Try for it. I may not actually be in the Super Bowl. But why not taste the “experience”.

We ended up throwing balls, kicking goals on the field, and sprinting at the interactive exhibits.

We stared at rows of old and new uniforms covered in glasses, colorful helmets. Shoulder pads. We’ve been following the rogues in other media.

“Isn’t that a former player there?” “I think so.”

Williams told me that people had lined up for hours to see the Lombardi trophy approaching the day before.

It’s all football. Anytime. A kind of mesh mecca. That is, until we come up with a teal-colored matching dummy to get the synapses working again.

It’s a picture of Prince, 2007. Midtime show. In the rain. Heart rain.

I just want to see you

Laughing in the purple rain

You know the rest. Sing it!

It was an opportunity for me to share it with the boy – Williams.

“I think it’s definitely one of the best, if not the best, mid-shows,” I said. “Definitely in the top 5”

I mean, he performed Purple Rain – IN THE POURING RAIN! – in front of 4 gazillion people, with a marching band on the field, about everything.

Prince’s outfit, in tribute to his Super Bowl halftime performance in 2007. (Photo by Ryan Carter) Passion is thick in the pouring rain, and you don’t have to be there to feel it. get that. You can watch it on the big screen 2007 version at a friend’s party, with nachos and drinks in hand and mouth and still feel it. (It is me.)

Nearby, there are similar nods like U2, Stevie Wonder, Tom Petty, Beyonce, Paul McCartney… and clothes and guitars.

But it’s the Prince’s exhibit – it’s the one that interests me the most. I remember it like it was yesterday.

If memory serves me right, the Coliseum game was the first and only NFL game I’ve ever seen in person. And when the Rams moved to St. Louis a few years later, and I switched to drums, Star Wars, and rock n roll, I didn’t know I’d ever taken on football professionally like in the early years when Wendell Tyler was a man. (For you dress-up geeks out there, the Wendell Tyler is a throwback bike. Classic in the late ’70s, early ’80s. Fast as anything.)

Sure, the adult in me worries about the game itself, from its racial issues to its past, present, and future in terms of safety. And I realize that I’m not doing all of those topics fairly here.

But I’m glad I got back to the game’s cosmic center for a day. It’s not all about football. It’s more about growing up.

And yes, it’s true,.. In the immortal saying of, ahem, me: “Sometimes you just have to throw a ball.”

Sometimes you just need to throw a ball. #SuperBowlExperience #LAconventioncenter LIVE@JHWreporterty pic.twitter.com/7yzdBnSfGb

– Ryan Carter (@ryinie) February 8, 2022