I'm awed by the apathy toward this weekend's Steelers--Cardinals matchup. What's its Roman numeral, Super Bowl ZZZ?

Nobody around here cares. I got invited to two parties on Sunday. Neither gathering has anything to do with the game.

The halftime attraction, Bruce Springsteen, has gotten a lot more attention than any game-related story line.

At his press conference yesterday in Tampa, Springsteen admitted he knows nothing about football.

He's never written a great sports tune---"Glory Days" is Springsteen's jockiest song, about an aging baseball player who once had a good "speedball"; before the tune's 1984 release, "speedball" was what killed John Belushi, not a synonym for fastball.

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Bruce Springsteen killed the mall crowd and a national radio audience (I was a part of the latter) by co-leading a version of "This Land Is Your Land" with Pete Seeger.

That's as great an American tune as has ever been written. As the world sees it, Springsteen is his generation's greatest American songwriter.

The setting was totally American.

Except for that dang Takamine guitar Bruce was strumming.

Takamine's a Japanese product that Spingsteen has long endorsed.

This country's in some trouble on the manufacturing front. We don't make anything anymore that the rest of the world wants except cluster bombs and guitars.

When it comes to guitars, in fact, we still rule. In the last 60 years, there hasn't been a picker on the planet that hasn't coveted our Gibsons, Fenders and Martins.

Woody Guthrie, the guy who wrote "This Land Is Your Land," was known for painting his rockin' slogan, "This machine kills fascists!," on Martin guitars.

Come back, Bruce. Your country needs you.