The Super Bowl halftime show is always a big draw, not least because there’s a fleeting chance you’ll see partial boob.

And next year’s Super Bowl will be even more special than most, because if you see anyone’s accidentally-exposed barely-covered breast at all, it’ll be Bruce Springsteen’s. Bruce Springsteen is playing the Super Bowl! Finally! Some good old-fashioned, all-American heartfelt stadium rock is coming to the Super Bowl at last!

At least that’s what the Super Bowl organisers must be hoping. There’s still every chance that Bruce Springsteen will want to play some of his newer songs at the Super Bowl, in which case 148 million Americans are in for six minutes of an old man mumbling about putting his penis up an old prostitute’s bum. Either way – woo.

Playing the Super Bowl halftime show is the most impressive way to let the world that you’ve made it. Actually, that’s a lie. Playing the Super Bowl halftime show is the most impressive way to tell the world that you made it a couple of decades ago, then took a few unfortunate career choices and lost your appeal but have since decided to put out a Greatest Hits album reminding people of your glory days.

Which, we think, sums Bruce Spingsteen up perfectly. It must do, because he’s playing next year’s Super Bowl halftime show, as E! Online reports:

New Jersey is going to the Super Bowl. The Garden State’s own Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band has been announced as the entertainment during the Super Bowl XLIII Halftime at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa. The big game will air Feb. 1 on NBC.

Bruce Springsteen playing the Super Bowl is bound to be an improvement on some of the more recent halftime acts, like the perfunctory set that Tom Petty spunked out this year, or the Tim Burton stop-motion animation that passes for a Rolling Stones live appearance these days.

That’s so long as Bruce Springsteen sticks to the plan and plays Born To Run, Born In The USA, Dancing In The Dark and nothing else. He might not, though – give him a chance and Bruce Springsteen might do the one about taking a whore up the arse and the one about how AIDS makes him sad and the second half of the match will be played out in silent introverted despondency. Which actually, we’re secretly hoping he does.

Still, Bruce Springsteen isn’t an idiot – he knows what a Super Bowl halftime show requires. A couple of the hits, a bit of a punchy song and dance and then go off and get upstaged by Kevin Federline. Any idiot could do it.

OK, any idiot except for Janet Jackson…