Katy Perry Touches Down
PHOENIX — As the final seconds ticked off the clock on the first Saturday in October, capping a hectic but exhilarating day, a University of Mississippi student turned to his neighbor and planted a kiss on her lips. This was no ordinary seatmate, though: It was the pop superstar Katy Perry. And this was no ordinary game; Ole Miss had just upset Alabama.
Before Perry’s security guard could step in, the student took off running, and so did Perry. Like almost everyone else in the stadium that day, she wanted to experience the beautiful bedlam unfolding on the field, with the state of Mississippi at the center of the college football universe.
The scene was the beginning of an incredible year in sports for Perry, 30, a sports fan in progress, who had never been to a college football game before. On Sunday, Perry will perform at theSuper Bowl halftime show in front of a packed crowd at University of Phoenix Stadium.
Her dream run in the sports world started hours earlier that October day. Perry was the celebrity guest picker on ESPN’s “College GameDay,” which was being broadcast from Oxford, Miss., for the first time. Wearing a fuzzy pink No. 86 jersey and two Rebel red buns, she correctly predicted that Mississippi would stun Alabama and that Mississippi State would upset Texas A&M about 100 miles down the road.
“I think it’s going to be a big win for the state of Mississippi,” she said.
As expected, she delivered her picks with superstar gusto. After she made her prediction about Ole Miss, she implored the Rebels, “Don’t let me down.”
Lee Corso of “College GameDay” then made his prediction, serenading Perry with “Sweet Home Alabama” as he put on an elephant mask, in reference to Alabama’s mascot. He playfully hit her with the trunk before she pulled it off in defiance. She said she did not like to lose. The four hosts giggled.
“She blew them away,” said Lee Fitting, the senior coordinating producer of “College GameDay” since 2004. “When the show ended, everyone’s mouths were wide open. We were all thinking, ‘Wow, now that’s a professional entertainer.’ You can’t teach that. She just has it.”
Perry’s appearance as the guest picker was an upset in the first place.
“When someone from the Ole Miss sports department said, ‘I think we can get Katy Perry,’ we were floored,” Fitting said. But by Thursday, she was booked.
Perry’s manager, Bradford Cobb, and her mentor, the songwriter Glen Ballard, graduated from Mississippi. Cobb had been trying to get Perry to a game since he began managing her in 2004.
Katy Perry Teases Her Halftime Show
The singer dropped hints at a news conference about her appearance at the Super Bowl on Sunday with Lenny Kravitz and an unnamed guest performer.
It made sense for Perry to attend the Ole Miss-Alabama game because she had played shows in Dallas on Thursday and Friday that week and was performing in Memphis on Sunday. Perry took a 4 a.m. flight to make it in time for “College GameDay,” preparing on the way by watching videos of former guest pickers, including Bill Murray.
Fitting said that before Perry was on the show, his favorite pickers were a tie between Murray, who body-slammed Corso at Clemson, and Will Ferrell, who donned a giant Corso head at Southern California.
But after that Saturday, Fitting said that Perry, “no question,” was the best in the show’s history. “And all of the guys would agree.”
He continued, “We’ve done of lot of crazy things on this show, but never did I think I’d see Katy Perry sitting next to Coach Corso while he’s wearing a seersucker suit.”
Of course, when the show ended, no one knew that Perry would be rushing the field or later launching herself off the bar at a college joint in the square called Funkys.
“I think she realized, ‘This is my college experience, packed into one day, and I’m going to make the most of it,’ ” Cobb, 40, said of Perry, who did not attend college. “It was a highlight of my year — to be able to give back to Ole Miss. It was just as good for the university as it was for Katy Perry.”
Cobb said that marketing Perry to the sports world was not a conscious strategy, although her management team was already in discussions with the N.F.L. about the Super Bowl halftime show.
Mark Quenzel, a senior vice president of the NFL Network, which produces the halftime show, said he was “riveted” by Perry while watching from home.
“We were looking for a person who was not just great on the stage but off it,” he said. “By that point we kind of knew we had gold. Did ‘GameDay’ make it make better for us? No question. We went from 14 karats to 18 that day.”
Cobb added: “I couldn’t have planned this. I wish I were that smart. This was almost too good to be true. She’s an Ole Miss fan for life now.”
Oxford residents are returning the affection.
“She won the hearts of every Ole Miss fan by predicting an upset of Alabama,” said Tom Howorth, who started the architecture firm Howorth and Associates in Oxford.
For his 60th birthday, a few days after the upset over Alabama, his three children gave him Perry’s latest album.
“She did a great job and helped put the university in front of people who are in the process of making college choices,” Howorth said. “Not only does she have talent, but she has brains — and good management.”
The “College GameDay” experience seemed to have prepared her for the media bonanza of Super Bowl week. In front of a packed conference room the size of a football field on Thursday, she emerged for a news conference about her halftime show wearing a football-themed dress and heels. She opened by saying, “I promise you, nothing about my show will be deflated.”
It should come as no surprise that there are plans for Perry to make a return trip to an Ole Miss game.
“If you were making a movie about the perfect college football Saturday, it’s that day in Oxford,” Fitting said. “We all looked around — ‘Did that really happen?’ ”
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