Super Bowl 2013 pregame show: Variety takes the stage

Here’s the video:

Keys both sang the anthem and provided her own accompaniment on a white Yamaha piano at midfield on the Superdome turf, singing it relatively straight and without much bombast. There were no Christina Aguilera-esque moments of forgotten lyrics, and no major moments of vocal gymnastics, with just a little extra added on near the end, and a false ending on “home of the brave.”

As chance would have it, there were 50-50 odds the Baltimore Ravens would win the coin toss against the San Francisco 49ers to begin Super Bowl XLVII on Sunday. When the toss fell, the Ravens won with a call of heads and elected to defer.

The coin toss odds were split evenly at -105 coming into the day -- obviously, a result of heads or tails is equally likely. But what isn’t equal is the recent history of winning the coin toss.

Singer Alicia Keys was this year’s honoree to perform the National Anthem at the Super Bowl in New Orleans. As they do every year, prop bets surrounded the big game, and particularly the length of the Star Spangled Banner.

Before kickoff, the multitalented Keys took centerfield to get things underway at the Superdome.

Macklemore is Seattle born and raised, and also holds the No. 1 album on iTunes. He’s a hot commodity at the moment, and even NFC West rival 49ers fans want his autograph. And who is he to say no?

He couldn’t help himself...

This it, America. This is the day you’ve been waiting for all year, kind of, maybe. The Super Bowl is finally here, and two weeks of incessant chatter all comes down the big game. We’re going to capture each and every special moment, and the not so special moments, in our Super Bowl live blog. Bookmark us, follow along, and feel free to leave your questions, witty banter and more in the comments below.

San Francisco is favored, but Baltimore has beaten the odds more than once this season. The hallmark of both teams are stout, smart defenses, populated from front to back with Pro Bowl-caliber players. On the other side of the ball, the Niners and the Ravens do things a little differently. 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick made the pistol offense a household name this year, elevating what had been a fairly common college system to everyday vernacular of NFL fans. Joe Flacco, runs an offense harkening back to the Air Coryell systems of the last decade.

When Alicia Keys steps to the mic to sing the national anthem at Super Bowl 47 on Sunday, she will be taking on one of the most prestigious and biggest challenges in music.

Update: Alicia Keys hit the over!

If you’re unable to get to a television for the Super Bowl, or even if you are, there’s a fantastic online option to watch the game courtesy of CBS. Yes, you can watch all the standard camera angles with the CBS Super Bowl live-stream, but there’s something even better in store this year. And it might be enough to entice you to fire up a computer at your party anyway.

For the football nerd, or anyone who wants to learn more about the game, CBS is showing an All-22 feed on its Super Bowl live-stream. This means you’ll be able to see everything, not just the typical zoomed-in camerawork we typically watch on a broadcast. The latter means viewers are playing a game of follow the ball. The former -- the All-22 footage -- grants the ability to watch everything, everywhere, as it happens live.

I have a special admiration for Gleason, and not necessarily because of anything he’s done on the field. He’s one of “my guys” -- an alum of Washington State, where he was an undersized firecracker of a linebacker that easily endeared himself to fans. What he’s doing now has little to do with football, but hopefully will have a long-lasting impact that goes well above and beyond the game.

By now, most know that Gleason has ALS. He was diagnosed just about two years ago after feeling some odd twitches. Doctors searched and searched for the root cause before coming back to him with the terminal diagnosis in 2011. To see him then and now is striking.

The pregame festivities should end at 6:30 p.m. ET, which is the scheduled kickoff time.

Televised coverage for Super Bowl XLVII can be found on CBS, with Jim Nantz and Phil Simms providing the play-by-play and commentary. Fans unable to watch the game on a television can stream the game live at CBS Sports’ official website, and Verizon customers can watch the game on their smart phone, through the NFL Mobile app.

The Super Bowl point spread has settled at -4 and it wouldn’t matter if it were -7 or even -10.

OddsShark.com handicappers see the San Francisco 49ers routing the Baltimore Ravens at Super Bowl XLVII and happily give the four points.

2. Randy Moss will play in the Super Bowl on Sunday for the San Francisco 49ers. He is 35 years old, and the third receiving option on his team behind Michael Crabtree and Vernon Davis. He sits third on the NFL receiving yards list behind Terrell Owens and Jerry Rice.

Rice has a vested interest in being the Greatest Receiver Ever. That’s convenient since statistics and facts let him make a very, very good claim for it, along with the Super Bowl rings and All-Pro selections that lend real anecdotal weight. He also believes Randy Moss could have been the best wide receiver ever.

Nate Silver, one of the world’s most famous statisticians, has crunched the numbers and is ready to weigh in on the Super Bowl. Most famous for his political predictions, Silver has proven to have the ability to use stats to figure out how events will play out.

For the Super Bowl, Silver is sticking with the age-old adage that defense wins championships. Silver used Pro Football Reference’s Simple Rating System, which gauges the effectiveness of an offense or defense based on the number of points scored or allowed relative to the league average and adjusted for strength of schedule.

The NFL is under all kinds of scrutiny in recent times, ranging from concussions to player safety on the field.

The commissioner, Roger Goodell, is trying to quell some fears of players and fans alike while searching for answers to these many issues.

- Coverage will begin on CBS at 11 a.m. EST. The first three hours of coverage will have features on New Orleans, the host city of Super Bowl XLVII, as well as a review of the NFL regular season and playoffs, plus a look at Phil Simms All-Iron Team.

- “Super Bowl Today” on CBS will then air at 2 p.m. EST, which is a special version of the regular “The NFL Today” that normally airs on CBS for game days. Super Bowl Today will then run until 6:25 p.m. EST, when the actual game coverage begins.

Kevin from The Phinsider:

Neal from Behind the Steel Curtain:

NEW ORLEANS -- If you look closely on the telecast of the Super Bowl see a man roaming the sidelines and sidelines of the Super Bowl wearing a black hat and possibly a pair of cleats, it’s one of the coolest cats on the planet.

That’s because San Francisco 49ers photographer Michael Zagaris is a legend.

As of Sunday morning, almost every sportsbook was there and one UK-based shop at -4.5.

“We had the line at -4 because we felt that’s where the line would eventually settle and we were ahead of the curve a bit on that,” said Kevin Bradley of Bovada. “We have evenly split action on both the 49ers and Ravens so we do not anticipate a move to -4.5 this late in the week.”

The pre-Super Bowl interview is an opportunity for the President to reach a large number of Americans who may be non-traditional news watchers. In each of the last two years, the interview has drawn almost 17 million viewers. The 10- or 15-minute conversation covers current affairs and the state of the nation, but there’s also usually some levity as the President typically gives his opinions on the upcoming game and is even known to talk about Justin Bieber.

If you’re hoping for a football-heavy discussion, this probably isn’t the format for you. While Obama will be asked “at least one question about football”, according to Pelley, this will be skewed toward current events. The tone will be very different to last year’s interview, in which President Obama used the platform to outline the achievements the nation had made under this first term as he began lobbying for a second. With the issue of re-election off the table, it will likely be a less pointed discussion in which the President can focus less on an end-goal, and more on the news of the day. It’s safe to say Obama will broach the topic of gun control, which has been a heavy focus of his administration early in 2013.

So maybe the player who scores the first touchdown is a little too pedestrian for you. Did you guess what color Gatorade will come out of the cooler in the post-victory shower? Well the folks over at Bovada have everything you could want to bet on, and more.

This is a tough one to judge. It would take a pretty monumental failure to get booed during the National Anthem, in fact it might take Rosanne Barr running on field, stealing the microphone, and yelping out her own strains of the anthem to rile up the crowd in New Orleans. There is one outside chance, however, and that’s if Keys puts her own spin on the anthem. It’s nice to hear an artist make a song their own (at least that’s what American Idol tells us), but when they take the national anthem and try to change it up -- that’s when things go bad.

Manningham arrived at our temporary studio on crutches, having just had surgery on his torn left knee two weeks ago. Webb, three months removed from the same surgery but still wearing a knee brace, got here soon after and the first thing he asked Manningham was what he injured. Manningham then pointed to his knee.

“Oh man, you too?” Webb said.