This morning football fans the world over sigh in relief knowing that when it comes to the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show, there will be plenty of opportunity to go to the bathroom, knowing full well there won’ t be anything on TV worth watching.

Multiple news outlets are reporting that Katy Perry has been selected to be the honorable beer-break entertainment for the February 1 game. Apparently a deal has been made between her camp and the NFL, besting Rihanna and Coldplay who were also in the running since August.

The fate of the career-booming slot, however, has been under scrutiny lately for a few dramatic uprisings including Rihanna’s tweet telling CBS, and essentially the NFL, “Fuck you!” after they pulled her song “Run This Town” from the Ravens vs. Steelers pre-game intro for obvious reasons. The controversy of the “pay to play” model has also been highlighted, as the NFL was rumored to be considering the fee from artists going forward.

In an awkward appearance on ESPN’s “College Gameday,” Perry made it clear that she is “not the kind of girl to pay to play the Super Bowl.” Which, semantics aside, it probably wouldn’t be her paying. It would most likely be her label, Capitol Records, but that’s none of our business, and we don’t care.

The Super Bowl doesn’t usually pay artists anyways to perform during the halftime show. It does typically cover travel and production expenses, which Rolling Stone says, “can reach as high as $1 million.” The appearance itself is of value to artists because of the viewer draw. Arbitrary studies conducted by Nielsen says last season’s Super Bowl halftime debacle brought in a record 115 million viewers, while only 111.5 million watched the game.

Which is odd, because we remember the last Super Bowl (though we’d just as easily love to forget it) and we were never asked whether or not we watched the game. Somehow, someone, somewhere keeps track of everyone’s eyes, and figures that more of those eyes watched the halftime show than did the game. Personally we blame Obama, his NSA gang and all of the recording devices the faction keeps in household smoke detectors.

“Replace the battery once a year,” says all safety manuals? More like government manuals to keep the video devices active while they spy on us. We think not, government. You’ll have to try harder to trick this brainiac …

Where were we?

Super Bowl, Katy Perry … right. The announcement from the Super Bowl isn’t all that shocking, given the pop-diva’s “Dark Horse” single, according to Billboard’s 2014 Mid-Year Industry Report, streamed over 65 million times just in the first six months of this year and her 2013 album “Prism” consistently charts in the top ten selling albums both for digital and physical copies.

Whatever the case may be, it’s certainly a much better billing than 2011’s The Black Eyed Peas or 2012’s Madonna. It’s our impression that the halftime show has fallen off a bit since 2004’s “nipple-gate” – continually coming under fire for its lack of understanding of the general population, or the effectiveness of old rockers to new generations.

Let’s just hope for the NFL’s sake that there are plenty of seven-year-old girls watching this season’s game, or it may just go down as one of the worst, in our humble and likely shared opinion with others. Go Broncos!

SUPER BOWL HALFTIME APPEARANCES SINCE “NIPPLE-GATE”:

XXXVII  (2004):    Janet Jackson / P. Diddy / Nelly / Kid Rock / Justin Timberlake
XXXIX   (2005):    Paul McCartney
XL         (2006):    The Rolling Stones
XLI        (2007):    Prince
XLII       (2008):    Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
XLIII      (2009):    Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
XLIV      (2010):    The Who
XLV       (2011):    The Black Eyed Peas / Usher / Slash
XLVI      (2012):    Madonna / LMFAO / Nicki Minaj / M.I.A. / Ceelo Green
XLVII     (2013):    Beyoncé / Destiny’s Child
XLVIII    (2014):    Bruno Mars / Red Hot Chili Peppers