I am glad to see someone actually playing instruments and singing for once!
Nothing flashy, he’s Tom Petty and he writes simple songs people can relate too. Makes me feel good to see the great reaction from the crowd too.
I always thought Tom was an underdog. He doesn’t have a classicly beautiful voice and he isn’t a good looking guy. But he really seems joyful to be playing at the Superbowl.
Can you hear the crowd singing over him? That’s cool! 
Rock on Tom.
I saw him in concert three times. He never disappointed.
Yes, but Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers are one of the great American rock bands, so it’s appropriate to have them at a great American event like the Superbowl.
Interesting that he drew so heavily from his “solo” album, Full Moon Fever, so that those were not, technically, Heartbreakers songs.
I thought he was really good. One thing I really liked about it was he played his songs at normal speed. It seems so often on these type of shows, they speed the songs way up.
I enjoyed it. I thought “Free Fallin’” was a little slow. No wardrobe malfunctions.
The performance didn’t seem to have a lot of energy, but I do like Petty a lot. I’ve seen him in concert twice and enjoyed both times very much.
Frickin eh…great halftime show…
Petty fans probably already know this, but the 3-DVD set “Runnin’ Down a Dream” is really worth watching.
I thought he has gotten incredibly better looking in the past 20 years. Great smile. Did he get braces or something? I never used to think he was at all handsome but he caught my eye muchly. Good choice for the show. Real music from real people who aren’t doing stupid things for extra publicity.
I thought his teeth looked good too…better than I remembered, and to be honest Tom Petty’s teeth don’t rate high on my priority list!
The last real memory I have of Tom Petty is that video he did, the one on the Alice in Wonderland theme. What was that, about 1989? And he was scary bad-looking there. I mean, not an ogre or anything, but not a handsome man. And he looked a LOT better tonight. I don’t even usually like facial hair but his looks really good on him.
(I’m sure I’ve seen him here or there since 1989 but that’s my most vivid memory of him.)
This is probably a silly question…but were all those people crowding the stage people who were already at the game…or did they truck people in? Because there just seemed to be a high percentage of younger girls…not my first guess of SuperBowl ticket holders…and EVERYONE came equipped with a lighter to hold up?
Other than that, i thought it was great…much better than the extravaganzas of the past.
I thought the same thing. Where did all those kids get Super Bowl tickets?
If I’m not mistaken they are “volunteers” brought in to look all excited and sparkly. The promoters look for people in a certain age range, and they come in for the show… and are sent out afterward.
Boring. Sorry, I like the songs, but I heard the same stuff on the radio all weekend, and this was the same or worse. Except the neato indoor things they were shooting off instead of firewroks…
Tom Petty did look and sound good for a man his age. Are you sure they were really playing, though? At times what the music was doing and what he and his lead guitarist’s fingers were doing didn’t quite sync up.
I quite liked it, with the exception of how the sound people from Fox mixed it. When you are doing a televised concert like that, you really need to add in crowd noise, not actively seek to cut it out. So much of what makes a concert great is the atmosphere, and when you are not physically there in person, the best way to get that excitement across is to add in the crowd cheering, singing along, yelling, etc. It’s the feeding off the crowd that makes live performance great.
Aside from that, I loved his set. It was all played excellently, with appropriate energy, and Petty seemed genuinely happy about playing the Super Bowl.
I didn’t think that crowd really looked like Petty’s demographic, unless he’s got a huge college following 
I agree with another poster that the performance lacked energy. And somebody forgot to mic the lead guitarist - his solo on the first song was all but inaudible.
I’m not a big Tom Petty fan, but at least it wasn’t the Rolling Stones.
Wonder what the odds are of getting Rush to play a Super Bowl halftime? That would confuse everybody 
I saw Tom Petty in Chicago this past summer and there were a lot of teen and young 20’s “kids” there for the show.
MTV did a Behind The Music for the Aerosmith/Spears halftime show… it was actually pretty interesting; lots of little tidbits. Like they handed out disposable cameras to everyone who came in and told them all to flash them at a specific point of I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing. I’m sure those little penlight things were handed out.
I’d imagine those kids were trucked in, but there’s no shortage of 20-somethings (like myself) who love Petty. I went with two 24 year old last year and we were excited as hell, as was the rest of the crowd on the Cal campus.
I love Tom Petty, but I don’t know that he’s a good match for the Superbowl. It’s supposed to be the most over-the-top ridiculous extravaganza of the year… Petty’s too calm and (dare I say) classy for it.