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…

Which one happened at yesterday's Super Bowl? Well, none. Tom Petty performed you see.

Tom Petty. You know. From Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Oh, come on, you know who Tom Petty is – he did that song that was on for about 20 seconds during that one episode of Scrubs once. At least we think that was Tom Petty.

Even though it ended with the shock result of the New York Dolphins beating the New England Billygoats by over two points, nobody watches the Super Bowl for the sport. They watch it for two things – one is to gawp at adverts for stuff and the other is to shuffle to the edge of their seats during the Super Bowl halftime show and hope to hell that someone exposes their knockers again.

Of course, that hasn't for a few years, so to make up for it the Super Bowl organisers lined up some of the biggest names in music to play tome of their most-loved hits – The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Prince. Of course, these didn't pass off without controversy of their own – Prince made his guitar look a bit like a penis, the Rolling Stones said "cum" and Paul McCartney's doughy face sent 14 viewers blind – but it's still a huge trio to top. 

So which almighty megastar did the Super Bowl halftime show organisers decide to book for yesterday's show? Tom Petty, that's who.

That's right, Tom Petty – the man with a solid UK chart history of one top-30 song from 19 years ago. The man who can look himself in the eye and know that the most extreme reaction he's ever provoked in anyone at all was that time when Free Fallin' made a Mojo reader tap his fingers on his corduroy trousers for 12 seconds. The man whose band is called The Heartbreakers even though they don't so much break hearts as occasionally cause some superficial rusting. 

But was Tom Petty any good at the Super Bowl halftime show? The Associated Press seems to think he was. A bit. If you like that sort of thing. Which, to be fair, you most likely don't:

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' surprisingly subdued Super Bowl halftime show was as uncomplicated in person as it looked on television. There were no wardrobe — or any other kind — of malfunctions. Moments before the performance, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers calmly waited on the Patriots' side of the field. Once given the go signal, the musicians quickly took the stage, picked up their instruments and started performing. They made playing a concert for about 100 million people look almost effortless.

And when the most exciting thing a report can mention is the way that the band walked to the stage, that can't be a great sign.

But, still, nobody was offended, nobody showed anyone their breast and nobody said any bad words, so in that respect the performance was a success. But if Tom Petty was the most famous name that the Super Bowl organisers could convince to perform at this year's halftime show, who does that leave for next year?

We don't know. But we hear that Kevin Federline is polishing his microphone already.

Read more:

Tom Petty Plays It Cool at Super Bowl - AP