Eight things about Super Bowl XXVII you did not know other than Dallas 52, Buffalo 17

Garth Brooks sang the national anthem, but that almost didn’t happen. The country superstar was refusing to take the field within minutes of his scheduled performance.

First of all, Brooks had done a ton for the NFL during Super Bowl week, including two concerts, anthem rehearsals, appearances and a reported $1-million donation to the league’s youth education charities. He was being pulled in all sorts of directions.

Garth Brooks sings the national anthem as actress Marlee Matlin signs, before the start of Super Bowl XXVII.

(Rusty Kennedy / Associated Press)

But he also had a request. He wanted the video for his song “We Shall Be Free” to be part of the Super Bowl broadcast.

“It was coming off the L.A. riots, and he said to NBC, ‘I’ve got a song and a video, would you play it on air?’ And the game’s producer told him yes,” recalled Jim Steeg, who oversaw Super Bowls for the NFL at the time. “The bad news is, Garth showed up at the game somewhere right after noon. NBC was already on the air and took the position the network was not going to show it because there wasn’t enough time to preview it.”

Brooks was fuming and said he wasn’t going to sing. He left the locker room and offered words of encouragement to actress Marlee Matlin, who was going to join him on the field and perform the anthem in sign language.

NBC tried unsuccessfully to dissuade Brooks from leaving, but the singer headed up the tunnel and out of the Rose Bowl, with an NFL executive at his side urging him not to walk through the crowd and instead wait for a league car.

“So he’s standing at the top of the tunnel and the fans see him and are all yelling at him, ‘Go get ‘em’ and ‘You’ll do a great job,’ all this stuff,” Steeg recalled.

Meanwhile, NBC was engaged in frantic discussions about what to do, and Steeg was trying to find an alternate solution.

Garth Brooks and Marlee Matlin hug after performing the national anthem at Super Bowl XXVII.

(Eric Reinke / Associated Press)

“I walked out of the tunnel onto the field,” Steeg said. “Everybody was kind of screaming at me on the radio saying, ‘What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?’ I think I said something like, ‘Shut the … up and let me think.’

“At that point I saw a friend of mine from Radio City and he’s sitting there with Jon Bon Jovi. We kind of looked at each other and I whistled Jon down to the field and said, ‘Would you like to sing the anthem?’ and he said yes.

“So I start walking back in with him, and now NBC has kind of recanted their whole position on playing this video. So that, and the fans shouting encouragement to him, I think convinced Garth to come back and sing it.”

Both Brooks and Bon Jovi were getting ready to sing.

“There was a moment when they were about 30 feet away from each other just staring at each other,” Steeg said. “Garth decided to do it. I thanked Jon and he went back up into the stands.”

Brooks sang the anthem, and NBC aired the video.