Until Beyonce performed, we were stuck watching a Super Bore

Thank you, Beyonce, for saving the Super Bowl.

While your halftime performance was certainly electric, your biggest contribution may have been zapping the New Orleans Superdome of its power for 34 minutes early in the second half.

Baltimore had just taken a 28-6 lead following a long kickoff return and appeared poised to blow out San Francisco. But — poof! — out go the lights, and a little more than a half hour later the 49ers engineered a rally that kept the outcome in doubt until the final seconds and cured viewers from the itch to grab their remotes.

In the end, “Super Baugh I” didn’t feature a wardrobe malfunction, just an electrical one. But that power failure probably transformed a potential Super Bore back to a Super Bowl.

We may never know exactly what sapped the juice in New Orleans — and, frankly, don’t expect the NFL to take direct blame or deflect it onto you, Beyonce.

You’ve been through enough lately, poor thing.

First, you endure national ridicule for your lip-synced national anthem at President Obama’s inauguration, and two weeks later your pyrotechnics-laden halftime show draws the ire of football fans suspicious that your electric performance was literally lights out.

But you shouldn’t be penalized for delay of game, even if the Ravens briefly were when their considerable momentum disappeared during the outage. They ultimately survived the San Francisco rally and won 34-31.

Instead, NFL fans should be thanking you, Beyonce, even if your halftime show seemed more like an aerobics routine set to music rather than a true musical performance, and that your attire appeared straight out of Fredrick’s of Hollywood, or that you were nearly upstaged by a commercial featuring “2 Broke Girls” pole dancing to Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me.”

And you weren’t even the best singer performing at Super Bowl XLVII. That honor goes to Alicia Keys and her wonderful rendition of the national anthem (Is she available next year?). A very honorable mention also goes to Jennifer Hudson and her performance of “America the Beautiful” alongside the Sandy Hook Elementary School Chorus.

Electricians and utility workers may puzzle over the origins of the great power outage of Super Bowl XLVII, but it’s more plausible that your stage’s inferno, electricity and pyrotechnics overloaded the aging Superdome’s circuits rather than some kid tripping over cord or a rat getting fried in a breaker box.

The NFL Nation owes you a great debt, Beyonce. Had it not been for your extraordinary wattage, Super Baugh would have been Super Blah.

Contact News Tribune sports editor Rick Lubbers at rlubbers@duluthnews.com or (218) 723-5317. Follow him @ricklubbersdnt on Twitter.

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