Neal Rubin

Disney lends a fairy tale feel to Big Game

Neal Rubin

A t the heart of all this splendid excess is a football game, and football is fundamentally simple. Enormous guys lean on enormous guys while merely large guys scoot around them.

That won't stop Sunday's TV commentators from declaring at least one of the head coaches a genius, but as quarterback-turned-broadcaster Joe Theismann once pointed out, "Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."

Others will pronounce the Super Bowl the pinnacle of all things sporting -- the ultimate game, even -- but former Dallas running back Duane Thomas deflated that notion in 1972. "If it's the ultimate game," he asked, "why are they playing it again next year?"

So, it's a game everyone used to fool around with in the schoolyard, coached by mortals, unparalleled until about 52 weeks from now, and watched by 80 million people. If you can make sense of that, you're Norman Einstein.

From here, five days from kickoff and a few blocks from Ground Zero-Zero, what makes the Super Bowl special is that it's a festival -- Woodstock with jocks, not to mention better plumbing. It's a concert by the Rolling Stones, parties thrown by every rapper not currently incarcerated, two weeks of buildup and billions of dollars tied to 3 1/2 hours of big guys leaning.

Since nobody does festivals better than Disney, it's no surprise to see the Mouse in the house in ways both large and small. The large will go about 150 feet. The small is two days' work for Lake Orion's Mark Champion, the voice behind a Super Bowl catchphrase so familiar that you probably didn't even notice when you didn't hear it last year.

Champion, the former Lions broadcaster, was calling Tampa Bay Bucs games when he was drafted to narrate an ad. It was 1987, and an old college friend needed someone to ask the hero du jour, "So-and-so, you've just won the Super Bowl. What are you going to do now?"

"I'm going to Disney World," said New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms, and Champion had made his first four-second contribution to pop culture history.

Since then, he has also posed the question to a yachtsman (Dennis Conner), a Miss America (Gretchen Carlson), two mythological beings (Santa Claus and Michael Jordan), assorted baseball players, the U.S. women's soccer team and skater Nancy Kerrigan, who did indeed go to Disney World and then was caught on camera grousing about being there.

Champion, 55, is grouse-free. "I've seen a gazillion different television shows where they have a take-off on that 'what's next' line, and it tickles me every time."

He'll get paid nicely for spending today at Ron Rose Productions in Southfield, recording his question with the name of most every player with a chance to make an impact on the game. Then, in case Disney guessed wrong and a third-string offensive lineman becomes the star, he'll spend the game within range of a sound truck at Ford Field.

It's a vast improvement over 2005, when the company built an ad around the 50th anniversary of Disneyland and Champion was benched. The campaign is back, says Disney spokesman Rick Sylvain, "because somebody will have a Cinderella moment, and we're in the Cinderella business."

Sylvain, formerly of Huntington Woods, can deliver lines like that with panache. This one, too: "Since this is Super Bowl XL, we thought, 'Let's go extra-large with our promotions.' "

That might be the only understatement of the week. Projecting after dark from Campus Martius, Disney will splash highlights from 20 years of ads and Super Bowls onto the First National Bank building.

The display runs Wednesday through Sunday after two nights of test runs with people like local newscasters and ESPN hosts. If you thought some of these guys had big heads before, try them at half the length of a football field.

Late Sunday, before the new commercial debuts on Monday's morning shows, the chosen star will be up on the tall wall. There's no telling who he'll be, but for what it's worth, Pittsburgh end Hines Ward has a tattoo on his arm of Mickey Mouse striking the Heisman Trophy pose.

Just picture him flexing as he leads a parade down Main Street USA. You don't have to be Norman Einstein to know Disney would love that.

You can reach Neal Rubin at (313) 222-1874 or nrubin@detnews.com.