Halftime History

Those who paid attention to the World Cup this summer and have any exposure whatsoever to European audiences know that the Super Bowl-style halftime show from the Final went over like a lead balloon. For people like me who play in both worlds, it led to an incandescently hilarious take.

There’s a related topic worth exploring on the way countries talk past each other about their sporting traditions. This reveals a key factor: the huge events through which most people experience sports from other countries are not representative of the way most supporters and fans experience them. Shockingly, different countries and cultures have different ways of engaging with their experiences.

I am a confirmed hater of the Super Bowl halftime show format. I’ve never liked extending halftime for rapid-fire artist & costume changes, shoehorning in random celebrities, and lip syncing. It’s just always underwhelming to me, even when done well. But…I also recognize that I have inherent curmudgeon tendencies. So I’m learning (gradually) to shut up about it and let people have their fun.

I laughed through it, but it did make me wonder: where did this all come from? It was more complex than I expected.

Football In America

Past times do not exist in a vacuum isolated from society, even when they're intended as escapes. This is particularly relevant when considering how a sport gains its position in society. During my research I stumbled across a clip from the New York Tribune, dated November 6, 1876:

“Foot-ball is a more dangerous game than either cricket or base-ball. It has never been a popular field sport in America, although of late years it has been introduced at the College of New Jersey, Yale, Brown, and many other colleges. In England the extreme violence with which it is played often leads to fatal results.”

The article implies that “violence” was the reason that bat-and-ball sports held sway in America. That is an example of the myth of American exceptionalism. I play vintage base ball and have familiarity with the evolution of the game. The relative “violence” of football codes had little to do with it; Old Hoss Radbourn was certainly not afraid of vulgarity and pugilism.  

The United States faced many challenges in the 1860s. One was simple geography: the US was large, 96% the land area of Europe. In that continent of smaller countries, it was already possible to travel from one end of a country to another end in less than a day; for enough money, a train could be taken from London to Liverpool in 8 hours or less. By contrast, it was not possible to get from New York to Chicago in less than 2 days, and not due to lagging technology. The extensive and effective rail network of the Northern US was a key factor in its victory in the Civil War.

Most land remained undeveloped; outside of the rapidly-developing metropolis of the Northeast, the the landscape was dominated by agriculture, wilderness, and the millions of indigenous peoples who had occupied the land for millenia whose opinions and well-being was not a high priority for either recent or established European arrivals.

In this environment, base ball (naming conventions gradually evolved from two words, to hyphens, to one word...I try to use them in the context of the time they reference) was uniquely suited to its environment. Teams could be formed quickly from available strangers; intimate familiarity with teammates was not absolutely required. Farmers came to town on Sundays for church, and then would shop, attend festivals, and watch or play sports. The individualized nature of the game allowed for players to easily be subbed in and out, as opposed to football codes where effective passing, blocking, and tackling generally required some level of familiarity with teammates.

And so, football in its as-yet undifferentiated codes initially took root in Eastern cities where practices could be held regularly and teams easily travel to face each other on a set schedule. It would take a major shift to change this.

The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862

In his 1796 address to Congress, President Washington had called for public funding of agricultural education. National agriculture education also became a plank of the Whig Party. Efforts were stymied by Southern states who viewed it as a threat to their Peculiar Institution (the holding of African people in bondage for purposes of slavery). So during the 1850s, Northern states began to take matters into their own hands, which is how we got Michigan State University (then the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan). A great day for Michigan, a bad day for couches.

Inspired-by and in coordination-with these efforts, Republican Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont introduced a land-grant bill to fund a system of where each state would have at least one agricultural college. The act was passed by Congress in 1857 and 1859 but vetoed by Democratic President James Buchanan both times.

Resubmitted in 1861 after secession of the Southern states, the act was amended to require that schools maintain a cadet military corps and teach drill, tactics, and engineering. It was signed into law on July 2, 1862 by President Lincoln, providing each state with 30,000 acres of public land for each seat it held in Congress.

At the time, many states had no colleges; in most of those that did, access and quality was spotty and graduation rates low. States immediately began taking advantage of the Act to found new schools or expand existing ones. The last college founded under the 1862 law was the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1917. As the former slave states returned to the Union in the 1860s-1880s, they received grants as well.

Many grew beyond their charter to became flagship universities of their state. College athletics could have looked much different and more exclusive. In the 90 years of the AP Poll, 41% of AP National Champions in football have been Land Grant schools. Particularly in the south and west, the explosion of college education, athletics, and the arts was largely thanks to the Morrill Land Grant Act. Georgia, Florida, Ohio State, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Purdue, Illinois, Kansas State, Texas A&M, Arizona, Tennessee, Clemson, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi State, Arkansas, all Land Grants.

19th Century Campus Life

Young adults in new environments tend to get in trouble as they explore their expanded boundaries. College students of all stripes and times have experienced it; student body behavior issues are well-documented in the early foundations of Oxford, Cambridge, and Heidelberg. Diversions are required for a complete human experience, to manage stress, and develop a sense of community.

When it came to athletics, cricket and base ball initially dominated as team sports. They were generally intramural affairs until the 1870s. Only where travel distances were shorter was inter-collegiate competition more common.

There was also a demand for music; brass bands were most popular. The first collegiate bands were formed at private schools in the 1840s, with Notre Dame and Holy Cross both forming their first bands in 1845.

Undoubtedly there was intermingling of athletics and music, but it was also informal. During the games themselves, the half-time break was focused on the players rather than the rooters. In 1877 it was noted that the Princeton, Yale, and Harvard teams “rested and ate lemons” at halftime but no reference was made to any entertainment for crowds. Break was short and inconsistent, limited to 5-10 minutes, just long enough for spectators to find a spittoon and return to their seats.

It is commonly stated that the first “half-time show” occurred at the University of Nebraska in 1893, with a drill performed by the band and cadet corps led by John J. Pershing. This event definitely occurred; whether it can be considered the “first” halftime show depends on your definition.

Performance music in support of college sports definitely pre-dates it. The Nebraska band performed at a base-ball game in 1887. At Notre Dame, “The Band of the Fighting Irish” performed at its first football game the same year. Lehigh University in Pennsylvania had a band performing at some foot-ball matches in 1889. By the mid-1890s bands commonly performed a “concert between the halves” to entertain the crowd, though this was generally done seated or standing.

Were these “halftime shows” in the modern definition? If a halftime show requires formation marching, then no. But by that definition, what usually happens in the Super Bowl or what happened in the World Cup Final this year doesn’t count either.

Growth of the Halftime Show

I was a member of the University of Minnesota Marching Band, “The Pride of Minnesota” from 2000 to 2004. One of the first books I purchased at the student bookstore in the Fall of 2000 was the Centennial Band Book which was published by the alumni band in 1992 to celebrate 100 years of the band. Because I have that reference, am familiar with the history, and I think it’s fairly representative, I will use that to outline the early days of collegiate athletics bands.

To fulfill the requirements of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, the University was chartered in 1868 to include the study of military tactics, creating the Cadet Corps in 1869. Marching and drill was mandatory daily in Spring and Fall for all male students; many complained of the drudgery of marching to only the beat of a drum. There were several abortive efforts at student-led groups to liven up drill, but none of them stuck until the craze of collegiate football reached the western frontiers in the 1880s.

On Wednesday, September 21st, 1892 the University of Minnesota Band was officially formed, led by engineering student and baseball pitcher Neville Staughton Jr. Staughton was also a lieutenant in the Cadet Corps, and had previously led a community band in Winona.

By the 1890s, most small-to-medium sized towns took great pride in both their community bands and their local base ball “9”; performances from both were regular weekend features. Gradually, foot-ball matches also were introduced using a variety of hybrid Association, Rugby, Boston, and McGill codes were common in the Fall and Winter. Early foot-ball teams were often formed to keep bat-and-ball players (usually base-ball, though cricket remained popular on the East Coast) in shape during the offseason. A similar pattern occurred in Britain, Canada, and Australia but deserves its own story.

In the Fall of 1892, the University of Minnesota foot-ball team met future conference opponents Wisconsin, Michigan, and Northwestern among others. Detailed records are scarce but there is enough to show that the Cadet Corps band played at rallies and sending-off parties, and was also present in some form on gamedays though the specifics of their participation is lost to time. Undoubtedly, similar instances were occurring at other college campuses nationwide

And so, even from this sparse evidence, it is clear that the halftime drill led by John J. Pershing was an outflow of a developing trend rather than a completely novel event. Indeed, returning to the Minnesota band, in 1894 they joined the student body in traveling to Madison for the Minnesota vs. Wisconsin game. In Madison, the band led a march of the team and traveling supporters from the hotel to the stadium, though their support was not enough to boost the Gophers to a victory, as the Badgers took the game 6-0, the first official top-level college football loss in school history. For Wisconsin it was hard-fought revenge; Minnesota had defeated the Badgers the two prior seasons by a combined score of 72-4.

By the end of the 1890s, the tradition of music at foot-ball games was firmly established across most of the country. Usually this took the forms already mentioned, along with some playing from the sidelines and often a “concert between the halves” which was usually given seated.

Bands marching on the field prior to the game was common at least by 1904, when the Chicago Tribune wrote about the Minnesota game played at Northwestern:

“Minnesota was massed in the west bleachers nearly 5,000 strong, and gave its band a rousing welcome as it marched around the battlefield delivering music which fully justified its reputation. In a few minutes the Northwestern band followed its rivals onto the field and the Gophers immediately gave the purple the courtesy of the floor, standing at ‘salute’ while the Evanston men passed the Minnesota bunch.”

It is also clear that music was offered by bands during the games because in 1905, the Minnesota Daily complained that at the Wisconsin game the band:

“...packed up their instruments from the time hope of victory was snatched away.”

Conductor Bert A. Rose explained he’d been given instructions from the football manager not to play when the team was on the field, and no more complaints were forthcoming.

Throughout this time, military drill remained the key focus of the band, with profitable performances and football games as secondary concerns. While exempt from certain aspects of drill, the bandsmen were required to devote non-gameday-Saturdays to drill and maneuvers.

The new century brought new innovations. In 1907, the Purdue University band broke ranks while marching on the field to form a “P”. The same year, the University of Illinois formed an “I”; these were the first two documented instances of collegiate bands marching in anything other than a military drill block. It is not clear precisely when the Minnesota band started to perform formation halftime drills, but it was doing so at least by 1910 when the Minnesota Daily noted prior to their trip for the University of Chicago game:

“The men have all been trained in the M and C formations and will march between the halves making the above formations.”

Thus, by 1910, the concept of a halftime show featuring a band making formations was already firmly established in the world of college football.

Modern Evolutions

Until the early 1960s, halftime shows were the domain of college football, and they were almost universally marching bands. Evolution of the format proceeded as well. Drab grey and green military uniforms were replaced by colorful and increasingly showy designs, spats to accentuate foot movement, introduction of high-step marching at many programs, capes, and plumes. Sousa marches were supplanted by arrangements of current popular songs. Drill moved from close-order marching and the school letter into picture drills and eventually other complex formations. Program size grew from paltry 10 person groups of the 1870s to some larger than 400 members.

The 1960s were also the coming of age for the National Football League. Despite its founding in 1920, the NFL had always faced competition from other professional leagues, and the vast majority of the American public still focused on the college game. The creation of the Super Bowl, the merger of the NFL with the American Football League in 1966, and the wide availability of color television caused a rapid transformation leading to the NFL’s domination of pro sport fandom in the US and beyond. It’s been said that in 1960 the three most popular sports in the US were Major League Baseball, college football, and boxing. By 1980 it was the NFL, the NBA, and MLB, which remains unchanged in 2026.

The history of the Super Bowl halftime show has been widely covered elsewhere. In the early days, it mirrored the college shows. The University of Arizona and Grambling State University marching bands performed along with big band trumpet player Al Hirt at halftime of Super Bowl I in 1967; for the first two decades of the game’s existence, halftime mostly celebrated this traditional aspect of American football.

Things changed in the 90’s. The 1991 show was produced by Disney and featured the New Kids On The Block. In 1992 the TV show “In Living Color” aired a football-themed block of counterprogramming and drew millions of TVs away from the CBS broadcast. To prevent that in the future, in 1993 the NFL invited Michael Jackson to perform and the Super Bowl Halftime Show that as it now exists was born, and has now spread to the CFL, the AFL, and now the World Cup.

So basically if you don’t like it, blame the Wayans brothers and Jim Carrey.

What Comes Next

This is difficult to research because search engines invariably flood you with Super Bowl-related responses, illustrative of how this has flooded the zone. Like it or not, there'll be more of it. The World Cup Final was illustrative, but it’s far from new. The Australian Football League Grand Final has had halftime performances since 1977, and multi-artist NFL-style shows since the mid-1990s. The Canadian Football League has followed the same path for the Grey Cup since 1990.

As for me, like I said before, I don’t like it. It’s not for me, so I just don’t watch and come back when the game is done, which of course is an option for you too. After all, you're capable of enjoying the break, right? But I do see the other side, not only because creeping Americanization threatens to destroy uniqueness, but also because it’s happened to college football too. It feels like every season there is a bowl game that won’t even let the bands on the field because there’s a B-list rapper who’s going to lip sync to a 30 year old recording. Change is hard to the things you love.

At the same time, none of this is new, just different. Last season, Chad Smith, the drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, performed a medley of their songs on the field with the my own U of M band at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis to celebrate a charity fund in honor of his mother, an alumnus. 86 years earlier, big band leader Benny Goodman conducted the Minnesota band a block away at Memorial Stadium. Goodman was still at the height of his popularity: he’d had a #1 Billboard Single earlier in the year. He had been invited by the bandsmen themselves who hunted him down at his hotel and knocked on the door to ask personally.

I think there’s a happy medium to be found here. It falls somewhere past “you can’t do anything we haven’t always done” but before “you’re adding 30 minutes to the game and denying other people connected to the program a chance”. But I am just a humble spare-time blogger, putting this out to be read by 10ish people so it won’t stay in my brain. Halftime shows don’t exist because Americans don’t care about sport(s), though I can charitably see why someone experiencing the NFL-version might think that.

In their more traditional form, they serve to connect a community around a college or university in a way I would expect to be familiar to anyone who has spent 90 minutes singing with the ultras at a match, marching through flare smoke to a stadium, or singing team songs at the bar. Speaking solely for myself, if not for the University of Minnesota Marching Band, I would never have found the favorite people in my life, or come to appreciate and love sports like I do, both on the field and off.

Maybe sometimes, it brings in someone who doesn’t like sport(s) and they find out they actually do. Who am I to judge?