Proposal turns romance into a commercial endeavor

It’s supposed to happen, when all compelling Super Bowl moments happen, in the fourth quarter.

It’s supposed to be, like all memorable Super Bowl moments, dripping with drama.

It could end up as one of the highlights of the greatest football game in America, but there’s one difference.

It won’t be about football. It will be about America.

And, depending on your perspective, it will represent either a dawn’s early light or a twilight’s last gleaming.

It’s a marriage proposal. A $2.5-million marriage proposal.

A marriage proposal disguised as a Super Bowl commercial.

It will be uttered in the privacy of millions of homes worldwide. It will be executed in the romantic beat of precisely 30 seconds. It will come with a heartfelt engagement ring purchased by a sponsor.

The theme will be one of those time-worn treasures about respect, honor and hyperbole.

The most public declaration of love in the history of mankind.

That’s the headline on the website of the dude who is going to make the proposal.

That last guy to make that sort of claim was Jesus, but, hey, you ever see his mug on CBS?

The lovesick man’s initials are J.P. He refuses to be more specific because he’s trying to guard the surprise from his girlfriend, an increasingly difficult task with his flack setting him up for constant interviews.

J.P. is somewhere between 25 and 35, he lives on the West Coast, he has been living with his girlfriend for several years, and about six months ago he had an idea.

Well, actually, it was his buddy’s idea.

“My buddy decided he was going to raise some money, buy part of a Super Bowl commercial, and propose to her in front of the nation,” J.P. said.

Then his buddy made the mistake of telling his girlfriend, whose response is probably the most heartening and reassuring part of this story.

“She was like, ‘Oh hell no, you’re not going to do that to me,’ ” J.P. said.

So his buddy gave the idea to J.P., who figured his girlfriend has the three most important qualities for acceptance.

She likes football. She likes glamour. And she likes watching the Super Bowl commercials, even the ones with dumb talking animals or David Beckham.

“My girlfriend likes gestures that are big, and there’s nothing bigger than this,” he said.

So he began attempting to raise money to buy the ads, which are the most expensive in television because of a Super Bowl viewership that tops 130 million pairs of eyes.

But his website was bombarded with nearly as many negative responses as donations. He raised about $85,000 before he realized that tack wasn’t going to work.

“A lot of people thought it was cheesy,” J.P. said.

Enter Joe Morin, an Irvine Internet consultant who thought otherwise. After surfing through all these shades of pink and red, he saw only green.

“I met J.P., he was extremely marketable, extremely charismatic, I thought the public would love him,” Morin said.

So he immediately began pitching J.P. to sponsors, who soon huddled around him like criticism around Rex Grossman.

The sponsors loved the idea of allowing J.P. to make the proposal with their logo in the background. He taped one commercial in which he spoke for 23 seconds before the sponsor chipped in.

“It was unbelievable, very romantic,” Morin said.

You want unbelievable? Morin then persuaded sponsors to flash the name of a website where viewers could watch a video to find out the woman’s response.

On that video, the ring is sponsored. The room in which they will watch the game is sponsored. The plasma television is sponsored.

Even the telephone with which she will call her parents after making her decision will be sponsored.

We’re assuming that the part where she says, “Can you believe what this jerk just ... “ will be muted.

This means that -- and this is where it gets really romantic -- everything that happens while she is watching the commercial and answering his question will be caught on hidden cameras.

“We have hidden cameras throughout the room where she will be watching, cameras everywhere, even hand-held cameras in case the main ones break down,” Morin said. “It will be perfect.”

Except, of course, if she’s says no.

Said J.P. “There’s a 90% chance she’ll say yes.”

Said Morin, “Oh, c’mon, she’s not saying no, not a chance.”

Of course she won’t say no. That would ruin the reality television show that her soon-to-be fiance has just engineered, and we Americans do not like to ruin our reality shows.

In America today, folks are happy to humiliate themselves for 30 seconds of fame, from Jerry Springer to wife swaps.

And, yes, now, it’s finally crept into sports, or didn’t you notice that J.P.’s idea won’t even be the first marriage proposal on sports television this year? Remember, Ian Johnson scored the winning two-point conversion for Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl, then fell to his knees and proposed to his cheerleader girlfriend.

These days, everything gets taken out to the old ballgame.

Couples who haven’t smooched in weeks will make out like teenagers for the stadium kiss cams. Women in the luxury suites will dance like strippers for the scoreboard cams.

The only people at sports events who like a modicum of privacy are the players, who often hide their mouths so fans can’t see what they’re saying.

The Super Bowl is such a super mirror of society, it only figures that one of the most personal moments in a couple’s life will now be bought and sold next Sunday in a fourth-quarter sound bite.

Down on the field, far away from the hype, in the guts of the real game, one can imagine what Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning will be thinking.

“Hey, what about my commercials?”

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.