Halftime Show

Ah, halftime. A few moments to catch our breath, refill our drinks, head to the kitchen or the bathroom while those big-ticket commercials run. Or not. This year, Super Bowl halftime alternatives - timed to coincide with the midgame break right down to the second - are proliferating, along with the alterna-choices for those opting out of game-day viewing altogether. First up: MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch Deathbowl in which, for the second year running, Claymation celebrities will square off as a clock ticks down the seconds to the resumption of the Super Bowl.

Ten weeks after he was inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, former Eagles great Tommy McDonald still has more stored-up energy than a PECO transformer. "I'm on Cloud 20 - not Cloud 9, Cloud 20," McDonald said after a halftime ceremony at Veterans Stadium yesterday in which he received his Hall of Fame ring. "I'll probably come down around the time of the Super Bowl, the Pro Bowl, something like that. " Hey, if the 64-year-old McDonald were any more up, he could go back to catching passes for the team he graced with his presence for seven superlative seasons.

Ralph: They scored again. Jeedie: 28-3 with 8 minutes to go in the half. Duke: And we just ran out of beer. Jeedie: This is sad, lame and woeful. Ralph: This is worse than that. This is boring. This is so boring. Jeedie: Well, whaddya want? It's the Pro Bowl. Ralph: They should really change something, man. I'm dying here. Duke: I will kill everybody in this room if we have to watch the halftime show. Jeedie: Ralph, quick, change the channel. I think he's serious.

It was an unusual feeling for West Chester East senior Drew Babinecz as he took the field for his final high school game Wednesday night. It was his school's same home field, but his Vikings were on the visitors' bench. Even the public address announcer, thanking the crowd for attending the Thanksgiving "Appetizer" Game, was different. The home field, announcer and even the halftime show belonged to traditional Thanksgiving rival West Chester Henderson. But the game belonged to East and Babinecz.

Washington Township field hockey coach Maryann Shivers runs into former students and players in the darnedest places. She has bumped into them at Disney World and the San Diego Zoo. And even when she goes to unique and exotic places - Bangkok, or boating down the Rhine River in Europe - she's liable to see someone she has taught or coached. "It keeps you on your best behavior," she said. So Shivers, who has been coaching for 31 years, must have been on her very best behavior Saturday night when Washington Township invited its 1977 state-champion field hockey team to watch the Minutemaids play Triton.

Greatness is not a predictable commodity, even when advertised, and the NBA's all-star weekend, which concluded last night with the league's annual All-Star Game, was living legend proof of that. To honor its 50th anniversary, the league put together a list of the 50 all-time greatest players and trotted most of them out this weekend. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the best of them were far more interesting to watch than the best of now. Even if they weren't playing. While the East came from behind to win, 132-120, in an All-Star Game that was a fairly standard mix of showmanship and shallow defense, the crowd's loudest cheers were heard during the halftime show.

Las Vegas's legal bookies were a two-point conversion away from their biggest Super Bowl win ever. As it turned out, there weren't too many winners on either side of the betting window after a Super Bowl that ended exactly how Las Vegas bookmakers predicted - with Green Bay a 14-point winner. "If it wasn't for that two-point conversion it would have been the biggest win in Nevada bookmaking history," said Michael "Roxy" Roxborough, who sets the lines for Nevada sports books. "We would have won $20 million at least, maybe $25 million.

There's a distinct Philadelphia feel to the staff that new St. Louis Rams coach Dick Vermeil has assembled. The three latest members, announced yesterday in St. Louis, all played for Vermeil with the Eagles. Vermeil coached the Eagles from 1976 to 1982, and John Bunting, the Rams' new linebackers coach, played for him that entire time. Defensive-line coach Carl Hairston was an overachieving seventh-round draft pick. Running-backs coach Wilbert Montgomery was a sixth-rounder who ended up as the team's career leading rusher with 6,538 yards and three 1,000-yard seasons.

If you who want to have a true Super Bowl experience but lack the tickets there's only one option: Head on out to the local sports bar and watch the game with the roaring crowd, a halftime show, and someone else doing the cooking. Cavanaugh's, 119 S. 39th St., has a "Tailgate Party" with hoagies served on an actual tailgate, scavenged from a 20-year-old Ford pickup. Club Independence, at Germantown Avenue and Thompson Street, has a performance by the Club Cheerleaders, the resident cheerleading troupe, with half of the squad representing the Buffalo Bills and the other half representing the Dallas Cowboys.

Twenty-seven years ago at Super Bowl I, the halftime spectacular featured the marching bands of the University of Arizona and the University of Michigan. In case you've been lunching in outer space, Sunday's Super Bowl halftime show stars Michael Jackson in an extravaganza loaded with music and special effects, including more than a ton of fireworks to light up the sky above the Rose Bowl. "Obviously things have changed very much since (Super Bowl I)," said Greg Aiello, director of communications for the National Football League.