How Lady Gaga caught a football at the SB HT show (BTS story).

[asana15 16,648]

"...Perhaps the best pass of the game was made at halftime, and there was no room for error. At the end of her spectacular performance, Lady Gaga threw down her microphone, then jumped off the stage and caught a football in mid-air before disappearing off camera. The person dishing out the football? That would be Canton, Mass., native Brian Mann, who is well-accustomed to making big throws.

“I was told they had someone lined up to make the throw, and he changed his mind on Tuesday, before the Super Bowl,” said Mann, who is now an associate athletics director at Rice University in Houston. “So, they cold-called the Rice athletics department looking for someone, and the secretary for the athletic director said ‘There’s this guy downstairs, who’s done some different things, you may want to talk to him.”

“They couldn’t tell me anything about it other than they needed me to make a throw,” said Mann. “Then they told me I had to work every day from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m., that I would not be able to watch the game, and that they couldn’t pay me.”

It was an eye-opening experience. From Lady Gaga and her dancers, to all the camera crew, to the 800-1,000 young fans on the field, and the 500 plus people assembling the set and getting out on the field.

“It’s far more intricate than I ever imagined,” said Mann. “I was really impressed with how efficient the operation was.”

Mann first met Lady Gaga on that Tuesday, and she left quite an impression. 

“She was incredibly nice and down to Earth,” said Mann. “She came right over to me and gave me a hug and thanked me for doing this. She was humble enough to ask me for guidance as to how she should jump, how she should be catching the football.”

The feeling apparently was mutual, as after the show, Lady Gaga arranged for a photo with Mann.

“She was kind enough to set that up,” said Mann. “She was great about it. She came out, she was smiling and gave me a big hug. She seemed really pleased with the entire performance. I was very appreciative that she was kind enough to do that for me.”

Mann was able to see how Lady Gaga worked with the rest of the staff, particularly the young fans and the stage crew.

“I was impressed from the very beginning with how she was,” said Mann. “She took the time to run around the field and high-five a bunch of them. She’d get on the microphone every day to talk to the kids on the field and encourage them and thank them. I just found her to be humble and down to Earth and nice. It made me want to do a better job because I wanted her to succeed, because I did like her instantly.”

The hardest part for Mann was getting used to the football. “The general shape was a football,” said Mann. “But because they had put a covering and then the crystals over it, it was a lot bigger than a normal football. The crystals just made it so slippery. That just added to the challenge. Even on the laces, they had crystals going across each one of those, so there was almost nothing for me to grab that gave me a really good grip.”

The crystals on the ball would actually serve a purpose the night of the show. Mann estimates that the stage was about 12 feet off the ground. In between Lady Gaga and Mann was the foam pit that she would jump in to.

“I was in the shadows, because all of the lights are pointing up at her,” said Mann. “They wanted me dressed in all black so I didn’t stand out. The only thing that gave her a target was the football. That’s what we decided, that after she threw the microphone, she was going to look for the football that I was holding up high so that she could find it, and then as soon as she found it that was my cue to move and throw the football.”

“I was nervous I suppose. We had practiced it so many times, I felt like I knew where I had to put the football for her to catch it” said Mann. “But there was one point during the show, where they tell everybody in the stadium to turn their flashlights on their phone as a way to light up the stadium, and when that happened I realized just how big 70,000 people can look. Then I decided at that point to put my head down and worry about what I had to do, and not look at the crowd. That would have psyched me out a bit.” 

“I had to throw it up and over the foam pit, towards her to try to lead her into the jump,” said Mann. “I tried to hit her right in the stomach so she could trap it against her body.”

“Because of the challenge of the ball coming out of the dark, we figured out that if I threw it overhand, it was going to come at her with a lot more velocity,” said Mann. “The idea was if I threw it underhand, that would allow the football to crest right in front of her.”

It’s an experience Mann won’t soon forget, and he came away a big fan.

“I was a fan of her music, but I didn’t really know much about her personally. I can’t say that I had followed her that closely,” said Mann. “What I found one of the coolest things to be was the way she empowers young girls. You could hear that in her voice and what she said to them, to be themselves, to be individuals and love who they are. I thought that was incredibly cool. She definitely has a new fan in me.”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/patriots/2017/02/10/here-how-guy-from-canton-made-pass-lady-gaga-super-bowl/VLv9yBCvg7iXQwH5gC7M0M/story.html#comments

Just for laughs:

 

[hausofkc 2,530]

Wow this is great 

[Harry 26,836]

Thanks for posting!

Gosh I'm so glad she caught it

[Jinzo 9,639]

Amazing  i enjoyed reading this

[Diamond Heart 4,400]

Great story 

[_Lam 597]

OMG I get nervous just reading this. Imagine if she didn't catch the ball. It's so risky.

Amazing.

[Leeo 2,366]

That's so cool. It's shookin' the way that they need to sort everything, every detail... because one move wrong and everything would circle the drain

[S0436 10,215]

What I want to know is where she landed!  And where did the mic go?

[mrlemon 574]

so much work for such a small amount of time! I'm happy it all worked out and he became a bigger fan of hers

[Melibi 414]

What a great story. Wow, he had so much riding on that throw! Also so interesting that the crystals were to make it easier for her to see, despite making it harder for him to throw.  

Queen of sports 

[hoodrat 299]

I wonder who was originally going to do it. They probably backed out because of how risky this was 

[Brainiac 10,590]

8 minutes ago, S0436 said:

What I want to know is where she landed!  And where did the mic go?

She landed in a foam pit right under the star. There's a video on youtube taken inside the stadium that shows the crew fishing her out just after the performance ended.

[SilkSpectre0 547]

I literally was thinking yesterday how awkward it would have been if she hadn't caught the ball so how did they make sure she caught it and who threw it to her and how she was able to see it with all that was going on.

Thanks for posting!

[Panchecco 17,400]

GOSH

that performance was pretty intense by itself but the catch and jump at the end were the perfect closure

thank god she caught that ****ing ball omg 

[shane_c 480]