The Super Bowl flyover may have cost $450,000. Was it worth it?

The fans inside Cowboys Stadium for Super Bowl XLV had as good a view of the flyover by four F-18 fighter jets as those watching at home. With the roof closed on Jerry Jones' $1.2 billion stadium, people in attendance were forced to watch the flyover on the massive high-def screens inside.

A Dallas TV reporter estimated that the flyover cost the Navy a total of $450,000. His total includes gas, operational costs and air time for the four F-18s, which traveled from Virginia to Texas for the event. The Navy told CNBC that its official records only tallies the amount spent on gas, which came out to $109,000 for the Super Bowl flights.

Even if we call it somewhere in between, the Navy still spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money for a few seconds of camera time. It's like an old riddle: If four planes fly over a stadium and nobody insides sees, is it worth the cost?

Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post doesn't think so. In a column lambasting the excess of the Super Bowl, she wrote:

For absurdity, how about those four Navy F-18s flying over the stadium -- with its retractable roof closed? Everybody inside could only see the planes on the stadium's video screens. All the Super Bowl extravagance is geared toward those watching on television, not in attendance. The anthem singers, the halftime shows and the blimp shots are for the viewer at home.

Christina Aguilera isn't making a trip to Dallas to sing a two-minute song in front of 100,000 people. Game organizers don't get the Black Eyed Peas and the Rolling Stones and Janet Jackson and Prince to stage elaborate halftime shows because fans in section 538 crave them, they do them to entice the casual viewer watching FOX or CBS or NBC to stick around through the first half.

The justification for the flyover is similar. The Navy used the one on Sunday as a recruiting tool. Instead of spending $3 million on a 30-second commercial during the game, it spent $400,000 on a five-second advertisement that everybody watched. Call it wasteful if you want, but there are far worse ways to spend taxpayer money than promotion of our nation's armed forces.

2011 Super Bowl: Lea Michele, Christina Aguilera Sing National Anthem Et Cetera

If you were wondering when the 2011 Super Bowl would kick off—well, keep wondering. Lea Michele from Glee, TV’s campiest nightmare, sang “America the Beautiful” on a huge platform at midfield. She was followed, mercifully quickly, by Christina Aguilera, singing a version of the National Anthem short enough to confound prop betters taking the “over” on 1:54, even after her inexplicable final note/notes. With Kung Fu Panda 2 and Livingsocial ads in the foreground the Cowboy Stadium grounds crew removed the platform to prepare for the coin toss.

For what it’s worth, I kind of liked Glee before every other episode became Very Special. In any case, it was interesting to hear one of its stars without a ton of chorus effect and autotune, although the Super Bowl audience might have been a good time to break into “Don’t Stop Believin’” again.

Aguilera’s National Anthem was… completely as expected, although not quite as long as I’d worried. Someday people will stop trying to repeat Whitney Houston’s landmark performance and begin singing the song correctly. That will be a wonderful moment in Super Bowl history.

Pittsburgh steelworkers warned not to skip work for Super Bowl

Some Pittsburgh-area steelworkers are being warned that taking off to watch the Steelers in the Super Bowl could cause "severe disciplinary action."

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that U.S. Steel's Mon Valley Works has issued a notice to employees (below right) which states that missing work on Sunday or Monday without just cause will result in a Super Bowl-sized penalty.

Union officials responded to the news in a good-natured way. United Steel Workers International vice-president Tom Conway wrote an email that claimed the decision was only made because the employee relations manager hails from Philadelphia and, as such, has some sour grapes with Pittsburgh's presence in the game.

He suggests enlisting non-football fans to volunteer for the Super Bowl shift and to hold a postgame party for employees to watch the game on tape.

I'm sympathetic to both sides here. The owners have a business to run and can't shut down the largest manufacturing plant of its kind in the country for two days because of a football game and its aftereffects.

On the other hand, these employees are steelworkers who want to watch the Steelers game. These aren't folks working at a restaurant or a coal mine or in the emergency room potentially skipping out of work. They're Pittsburgh steelers who are trying to see the Pittsburgh Steelers game! Give the guys a break.

Planning ahead has its virtues.