Super Bowl XL - Entertainment - Pre-game Ceremonies

Pre-game Ceremonies

During the pre-game ceremonies, Stevie Wonder, along with Joss Stone, India.Arie, and John Legend, performed a medley of Wonder's hits. The Four Tops also performed during the pregame ceremonies, though the performance was not televised. In honor of the fortieth Super Bowl, the pre-game ceremony featured the on-field introduction of 30 of the previous 34 Super Bowl Most Valuable Players (with the exception of Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Jake Scott, and the late Harvey Martin). The absences of Montana and Bradshaw were originally reported to have been due to disagreements over appearance funds to be paid by the NFL, but each later rebutted such reports, suggesting that they had prior family commitments; Scott was reported to have been traveling through Australia.

A moment of silence was observed in memory of the two civil rights activists who had died during the months prior to the game: Coretta Scott King (six days earlier) and Rosa Parks (on October 24, 2005), the latter a long-time Detroit resident.

Singers Aretha Franklin and Aaron Neville, along with pianist Dr. John and a 150-member choir, performed the national anthem as part of a pre-game tribute to New Orleans, a nine-time Super Bowl host city then in the midst of efforts to rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The national anthem was performed in American Sign Language by Angela LaGuardia, a teacher at Michigan School for the Deaf.

Tom Brady, MVP of Super Bowls XXXVI and XXXVIII, became the first active player to participate in a Super Bowl coin toss, the result of which toss was tails, as selected by Seattle.

The Steelers became only the third franchise to wear white jerseys, (which they had worn for each of their three road playoff victories) despite being the "home" team; the Cowboys (Super Bowls XIII and XXVII) and the Redskins (Super Bowl XVII), both of whom traditionally wear white at home, are the other two. Bill Cowher stated that the Steelers were playing in Detroit, not Pittsburgh, and therefore it wasn't a "home" game (although 10 years earlier Cowher's Steelers did wear their black home jerseys as the "home" team in Super Bowl XXX at Tempe, Arizona away from Pittsburgh, where they had won both their playoff games to reach that Super Bowl). The Steelers became the first AFC club to don their white jerseys as "home" team; having been the Cowboys' opponent in Super Bowl XIII, they became the first (and so far only) team to have worn white jerseys for a "home" Super Bowl and colored jerseys for an "away" one.

Although the participating teams each entered as a team for their introduction, the Steelers insisted on sending Jerome Bettis out ahead of the rest of the team in front of his hometown crowd.