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This Super Bowl halftime show may be the last time America feels like partying for a while, so why feature an English rock band that hasn't had a hit since Ronald Reagan's first term?
Don't get me wrong. I loved The Who when I was a teen in the 1970s. I wore down the grooves of "Quadrophenia'' and "Who's Next" and, somewhere in my attic, I'm sure I could find "Live at Leeds.'' (I'd check, but it's freezin' up there.)
That said, this is the same group that sang "I hope I die before I get old,'' a line that lead singer Roger Daltrey spat with sincerity.
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Hearing that ancient anthem from a 65-year-old mouth? Comical.
I realize I sound like a crank, the very sort of soul Daltrey told to "f-f-f-fade away.'' I also realize, as a high school friend put it on Facebook (a Web site heavier with AARP members each passing day) that the Super Bowl halftime act always features "geezers''; the last five acts were Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Prince, Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen.
True, but there is something just so defiantly English about The Who that they seem out of place at dead center of our uniquely American game. While it's true that McCartney and the Stones are fellow British Invasion veterans, The Who alone seasoned an album with BBC accounts of fights between "mods" and "rockers.''
Having The Who play the Super Bowl is like having the Beach Boys play for the English Premier League.
We need a big American party because this may be, or at least should be, our last great diversion before we get down to the serious business of fixing the country. Congress just allowed us all to go $1.9 trillion deeper into federal debt, and President Barack Obama is shattering the deficit records set by President Reagan and the Presidents Bush, which were already scary.
How much we can blame this on the presidents rather than on the American borrow-and-spend ethos might be a discussion livelier than any halftime show. We seem to be smashing our credit record with the same enthusiasm that The Who's Pete Townshend once smashed guitars.
Of course, news from across the pond tells us that members of the European Union -- notably Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland -- have gone pretty deeply into the red, too. So one might argue it's just as well that our big halftime show has an international draw. People the world over seem to be alike in at least one sense: Nobody wants to pay for anything.
So, this weekend, when we relax by watching impossibly massive bodies hurtle into each other at great speed while we reach for our 137th chip, we will also see The Who. Europeans may tune in so they can better understand America, or to see the aged rockers. Millions of us in this increasingly global community may sense that this could be the last big party for a lot of people.
Only a few, however, will remember this:
''Is there a group called the How? Somebody asked me when the How were coming and I didn't know how to answer. You've told me how, now tell me when."
I'm sorry. That last quote doesn't have much to do with anything I've said previously. But the rules of Pittsburgh journalism clearly state that any story on The Who must eventually include that statement from Mayor Sophie Masloff on May 26, 1989, at a Stadium Authority meeting to approve an appearance by The Who at Three Rivers Stadium.
Sophie is 92 and still rocks.
Now let's play some football -- the American kind.
