Dreams & legends live
Museum’s Super Bowl exhibit offers tributes and inspiration
While the final four NFL teams will find out Sunday who gets to compete for the Vince Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl LVIII, New Yorkers can view that prized piece of hardware at Midtown’s Paley Center for Media, where the trophy serves as the centerpiece of a Super Bowl exhibition featuring unforgettable Giants and Jets memorabilia.
The unprecedented exhibit, titled “Beyond the Big Game,” runs through March 3.
“It’s quite something when you see it all together,” Paley Center curator and Jets fan Jason Lynch told the Daily News.
Among his favorite items is a football signed by Joe Namath. There’s also a pigskin signed by former Giants quarterback Phil Simms among the collection’s dozens of other artifacts.
A display case in the W. 52nd Street museum contains all 57 Super Bowl rings — including the four won by the Giants between 1987 and 2012, and the one awarded to the Jets in 1969. The exhibit also includes game balls from Big Blue’s 1991 and 2007 championships.
The Vince Lombardi Trophy highlights the Paley Center’s presentation until the middle of the week, when the 22-inch sterling silver statuette travels to Las Vegas to be presented to this year’s Super Bowl champion. A replica of one of the Giants’ Super Bowl trophies will take its place until it returns to the museum on Feb. 13.
“Beyond the Big Game” also features more than 150 photos of iconic Super Bowl moments and screenings of some of the greatest plays in Super Bowl history.
And the exhibition has plenty to offer those who enjoy the spectacle of the Super Bowl just as much — or more than — the game itself.
More than a half-dozen screens will play Super Bowl halftime shows, along with more than 60 memorable commercials that debuted during the big game, such as Apple’s groundbreaking Orwellian 1984 ad directed by Ridley Scott that’s now considered an advertising masterpiece.
Lynch believes “Beyond the Big Game” exemplifies just how much the Super Bowl, media and The Paley Center itself have evolved over the past 50 years.
“When you think about it, the Super Bowl is the biggest media event of the year,” he said. “It’s literally the biggest TV show of the year. It’s the one TV event that gets more popular every year… every decade.”
Lynch cites the musical acts and commercials as a large part of what makes the Super Bowl bigger than any other U.S. sporting event. A 30-second ad spot during next month’s game reportedly goes for $7 million.
“It is the one time of the year audiences embrace commercials rather than trying to avoid them,” he said.
Fans who can’t wait to watch Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11 are invited to visit the Paley Center on Feb. 10 for a one-time-only screening of the very first Super Bowl, between the Vince Lombardi-led Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs. The center calls the footage of the 1967 matchup “The Holy Grail of Football.”
There was no known recording of the game until 2011, when a Pennsylvania man came forward with two-inch quadruplex tapes his father recorded in a TV studio more than 40 years earlier. Super Bowl I aired on CBS and NBC, with both networks reportedly erasing the tapes so they could be reused to record soap operas.
At the time, “there wasn’t a sense this was going to be this big thing,” Lynch said.
The NFL subsequently pieced together disparate footage it collected to reproduce a copy of the first Super Bowl in 2016.
The Paley Center exhibit also features a football used in that game, on loan from the NFL Hall of Fame.
Tickets for “Beyond the Big Game” and the special screening of Super Bowl I are included with $20 general admission to The Paley Museum, and are free for Paley members.