February 1, 2004, 20 years ago: Super Bowl XXXVIII -- thus far, the Super Bowl with the longest Roman numeral -- is played at Reliant Stadium (now NRG Stadium) in Houston. And, for the first time, and thus far the only time, a Super Bowl is overshadowed by something else that happened inside the stadium. (Black Sunday was a novel, and then a film. Same with The Sum of All Fears. Thankfully, nothing like either has ever happened in real life.)
The New England Patriots were AFC Champions, after winning Super Bowl XXXVI on a last-play field goal by Adam Vinatieri and then missing the Playoffs in the season in between. By an unusual turn of events, it was the 4th Super Bowl appearance in team history, but the 1st that wasn't played at the Superdome in New Orleans.
The Carolina Panthers were NFC Champions in their 8th season of play, after reaching the NFC Championship Game in 1996-97, only their 2nd. This was not the 1st time a Carolina-based team had reached a Final, though: The Carolina Hurricanes had reached the 2002 Stanley Cup Finals.
It was the 2nd time the Super Bowl was held in Houston, after Super Bowl VIII was held at Rice Stadium, home of Rice University. It was already outdated by 1974, but it seated about 20,000 more people than the Astrodome did. The NFL waited until both the Houston Oilers and the Astrodome were replaced before awarding Houston another game. (The League now has a policy that the game can only be played in stadiums that are a team's home field, even as they hope that team won't make the game, so that it will be a neutral field.) It was the 1st time that the Super Bowl was held in a stadium with a retractable roof.
The Patriots were favored by 7 points. Houston native Beyoncé Knowles sang the National Anthem. The 1st quarter was scoreless: The closest either team came to scoring was Vinatieri missing a 31-yard field goal attempt.
In the 2nd quarter, Vinatieri attempted a field goal from 36 yards out. This time, the Panthers blocked it. But the Panthers were no better: Quarterback Jake Delhomme completed only 1 of his 1st 9 passes, got sacked 3 times, and fumbled. The last of those sacks, by Mike Vrabel, forced the fumble, which became the break the Patriots were looking for. Richard Seymour recovered it at the Patriots' 20-yard line, and, 3 plays later, Tom Brady threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to Deion Branch.
This was 26 minutes and 55 seconds into the game, the longest a Super Bowl had gone from kickoff without scoring. But it opened the floodgates: Delhomme figured things out, drove the Panthers 95 yards in 8 plays, and threw a 39-yard touchdown pass to Steve Smith to tie the game. But there was 1:07 left in the half, and Brady took the Pats 78 yards in 6 plays, 52 of those yards on a pass to Branch. Brady threw a 5-yard pass to David Givens, to make it 14-7 New England. But there was still enough time for the Panthers to get into field goal range, and John Kasay kicked one from 50 yards out on the last play of the half. Patriots 14, Panthers 10.
The Super Bowl Halftime Show was next. It was sponsored by MTV (which, like the game's telecaster, CBS, was owned by Viacom), and it began with a "Choose or Lose" video, encouraging young people to vote. So far, so good.
As for the live performances, Jessica Simpson, a Texas native, started the festivities not by singing -- there was a relief -- but by shouting, "Houston, choose to party!" Next up, the combined marching bands of the University of Houston and Texas Southern University (a historically black school in Houston) played "The Way You Move," by OutKast (who were not there). Still, nothing that couldn't be rated PG.
Next up was Sean Combs, then using the name P. Diddy. I have never liked him, but he wasn't especially offensive this time, singing "Bad Boy for Life." Next up were singers dressed like cheerleaders, singing Toni Basil's 1982 Number 1 hit "Mickey," substituting first "Diddy," then "Nelly." That was the cue for Nelly, the St. Louis-based rapper, who sang his best-known song, "Hot in Herre." This is where the trouble started: Nelly kept grabbing and shaking his dick.
Diddy followed with another song, his duet with his pal, the late Notorious B.I.G., "Mo Money Mo Problems." This was followed by Robert James Ritchie, a.k.a. Kid Rock. Or, as he said, introducing himself, "My name is Kiiiiiiiiiiiid... " I never did hear him say, "Rock!" This great conservative was wearing a plastic American flag as a poncho. That should have been the most offensive gesture of the day, although the 2 songs he did, "Bawitdaba" and "Cowboy," were not exactly Sgt. Pepper material.
Next was Janet Jackson, who wore a long black vinyl outfit with what looked like rhinestones around the breasts, and led a group of dancers through her song "Rhythm Nation." At the time, she was bigger than any of these people. She had done what few relatives of superstars had managed to do: Build her own brand, and get on, if not quite the same level, then maybe only one level below her brother Michael.
And if that had been the end of it, well, we might have been talking about how disgusting Nelly was, and how hypocritical Kid Rock is. But that was not the end of it. The last song was "Rock Your Body" by Justin Timberlake.
The biggest heartthrob of the vocal group NSYNC, he has had, far and away, the biggest solo career of any member of the late 1990s-early 2000s "boy bands." He did it by doing what Janet did: Building his own brand. In his case, building an image of the Southern version of a sex maniac who is simply too charming for women to resist.
"Rock Your Body" had been written by Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams, collectively known as The Neptunes. Ironically, they had first offered the song to Michael Jackson, but he turned it down. So they gave it to Justin, and his recording of it hit Number 2 in 2003.
But I didn't like Justin. Never have. Never will. Janet, I liked, and still do. But not Justin. I was watching this game, and this show, at a chain restaurant that has since closed (though the chain is still in business). When I saw him come onstage, I thought, "Good time for a bathroom break."
It seemed as though the halftime show was going to end with Janet and Justin dancing together to Justin's big hit. And if that had been the case, no one would remember it today. But they got to the last line of the song, which is "I gotta have you naked by the end of this song."
And just before getting to that line, thus proving that both of them had been lip-syncing, Justin grabbed Janet's right breast, and pulled, tearing off a piece of the outfit, and exposing the breast, with what looked like a jeweled earring attached to the nipple.
At that moment, presumably as scheduled, fireworks were shot off from the stadium's roof. Someone at CBS saw what was happening, and immediately switched camera angles to show the fireworks above -- not the "fireworks" below.
And, being in the bathroom at the time, I missed it.
When I came back out, the restaurant wasn't exactly packed, and if anybody was talking about it, I didn't hear it. This was February 1, 2004. Facebook went online exactly 3 days later. Twitter was more than 2 years away. We had the Internet, but we didn't have "social media" as we now understand that term. Had I gone into a chat room, or onto a message board, or even clicked on a newspaper or TV network website, I would have found out what happened rather quickly. But there was no way to know within minutes what had happened. I literally didn't know about it until I woke up the next morning.
I didn't know about it because CBS announcers Greg Gumbel and former New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms didn't talk about it. They did briefly talk about, but did not show, a streaker who ran onto the field after the halftime show's stage was dismantled. The streaker wasn't completely naked: He wore a thong. And he had the address of a website written in black ink on his back. This was no Morganna the Kissing Bandit, or 1986 World Series parachutist Michael Sergio, or even the "Fan Man" at one of the Evander Holyfield vs. Riddick Bowe fights. This was just some fat yutz trying to make a quick buck and maybe a name for himself.
It probably never entered his mind that he might be taking some of the heat off the halftime show. If that had been his secondary intent, along with the primary intent of promoting the website, it didn't work at all.
Anyway, with me only knowing about the game itself, the game itself went on. There was no scoring in the 3rd quarter, leaving it still at New England 14, Carolina 10. But there would be 37 points scored in the 4th quarter, the most ever in a single Super Bowl, breaking the record of 35 in the 2nd quarter of Super Bowl XXII, all by the Washington Redskins.
Two plays into the 4th quarter, Antowain Smith scored on a 2-yard run, and the Patriots led 21-10. The Panthers got the ball back, and DeShaun Foster broke off a 33-yard touchdown run. The Panthers tried a 2-point conversion, but failed, leaving the score at 21-16. The Patriots launched another drive, but Reggie Howard intercepted Brady in the end zone. Delhomme then threw an 85-yard touchdown pass to Mushin Muhammad, the longest play from scrimmage in Super Bowl history. Another 2-point conversion attempt failed.
But the Panthers now led, 22-21. It was the 1st time a team had trailed a Super Bowl by at least 10 points and had taken the lead.
The Patriots were not fazed. (Because they knew they were still going to win? Were they cheating?) The Patriots got to 3rd & goal, and set Vrabel up as a tight end, and scored. The Patriots attempted a 2-pointer, and made it, taking a 29-22 lead with 2:51 to go.
There was plenty of time for the Panthers. Two years earlier, Ricky Proehl had caught a game-tying touchdown pass for the St. Louis Rams against the Patriots, who won that Super Bowl anyway. This time, he was playing for the Panthers, and Delhomme threw him a 12-yard touchdown pass. Having already failed on 2 2-point conversions, Panthers coach John Fox went for 1, and Kasay kicked the extra point to make it 29-29.
But there was 1:08 left, and Kasay's kickoff went out of bounds, giving the Pats the ball on their own 40. Brady got them close enough for Vinatieri to try a 41-yard field goal attempt with 9 seconds left. In his career, he had attempted 35 field goals in indoor stadiums, and missed only 4 of them -- but all 4 had been right there at Reliant Stadium.
He made it. The Panthers could do nothing with the ensuing kickoff, and the Patriots had won, 32-29. There had now been 4 field goal attempts to win Super Bowls in the last 10 seasons, 3 of them successful, and Vinatieri had made 2 of them.
The Panthers didn't blow it. They didn't choke. They didn't break their fans' hearts. They played pretty well, scoring enough points to have won 17 of the 37 previous Super Bowls. But it would take them 12 years to get to another, and they still haven't won one. The Patriots, meanwhile, continued their run of success.
It was one of the best Super Bowls ever played. And, outside of New England, and North and South Carolina, nobody cared. All people wanted to talk about was what was already being called "Nipplegate." It had overtones of sex, overtones of race (Janet is black, Justin is white), and a connection to sports. A triple threat.
The NFL ruled that MTV would never be invited to participate in anything with them again. The Federal Communications Commission fined CBS $550,000 for "indecency." A federal court ultimately voided the fine, and it was never paid. That was the right call: The situation wasn't CBS' fault. They were taken every bit as much by surprise as everyone else was.
The bulk of the public anger fell on Janet. The jokes from late-night comedians, while embarrassing and seeming to go on forever, turned out to be the least damaging part of it. Viacom and its subsidiaries, including CBS, MTV and Infinity Broadcasting, blacklisted her from their broadcasts.
"There are much worse things in the world," Janet said, "and for this to be such a focus, I don't understand."
From 1986 to 2001, she had 10 songs reach Number 1 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart. Her next album, titled Damita Jo after her middle name, was released on March 30, 2004, 58 days after the incident, and none of the 3 singles from it cracked the Top 40. From 2006 to 2021, she would have only 2 singles that did.
She was 37 years old at the time of the incident, and still looked, moved and sounded great, so it's not like she was washed up. And her fans still sold out arenas all over the planet. But she has never again been a hitmaker.
And Timberlake? His next album came on September 8, 2006, and it produced 3 Number 1 hits. From 2006 to 2018, he had 18 Top 10 hits, 5 of them hitting Number 1.
He got off scot-free from hurting Janet's career. Just as he had gotten off scot-free from the way he treated Britney Spears, both while and after he was her girlfriend.
In 2021, a documentary about Britney's struggle to reclaim her legal rights aired, and it put Timberlake's actions and words -- toward her, and toward Janet -- in a new light. In an Instagram post, Timberlake said:
I am deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn, or did not speak up for what was right...
I understand that I fell short in these moments and in many others and benefited from a system that condones misogyny and racism...
I didn’t recognize it for all that it was while it was happening in my own life but I do not want to ever benefit from others being pulled down again.
I can do better and I will do better.
He had better. To paraphrase one of his later hits, he was one of those other boys who don't know how to act.
