USD Alumnus Plays Sugar Cane in Bad Bunny's Halftime Show

Jonathan Martinez Mancia ’25 (BA) was fresh out of the gym when an email landed in his inbox in late January confirming he had been selected out of thousands of applicants for a role in Super Bowl LX’s halftime show.

The catch — he would be dressed as a 40-pound sugar cane plant.

Martinez, a University of San Diego (USD) graduate who studied political science and sociology, was among approximately 400 performers selected to serve as field cast for Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show Feb. 9 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

The casting call, posted in early January on Instagram and TikTok by a company that manages field performers for NFL halftime shows, sought applicants between 5 feet 7 inches and 6 feet tall with an athletic build and the ability to carry a costume weighing more than 40 pounds. An estimated 40,000 people applied.

“I knew I was throwing an application into the air — a needle in a haystack,” Martinez said. “But I got it.”

Martinez, whose all-time favorite artist is Bad Bunny, said the timing felt like fate. He grew up in East Palo Alto — about 20 minutes from Levi’s Stadium.

Performers weren’t told what their costumes would look like until the second or third rehearsal. When producers revealed the sugar cane design, the reaction in the room was mixed.

“A lot of us were like, ‘nah,’” Martinez said. “But they said, ‘This is going to go viral. This is going to be a meme.’ And in hindsight, they definitely knew what they were doing.”

Martinez was positioned in section B-78, near “La Casita” — one of the show’s central set pieces. The costume was hot, heavy and limited mobility, but performers found ways to part the cane stalks just enough to catch glimpses of the show. What he couldn’t see from the ground, Martinez watched from the stadium’s jumbotron.

The sugar cane carried meaning beyond its aesthetic. The crop is historically tied to Puerto Rico’s colonial economy — a point Martinez believes Bad Bunny made deliberately, alongside Ricky Martin’s performance of a song addressing colonialism on the island.

The day after the Super Bowl, Martinez began work as a staff assistant for Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.), a job he had to push back by a week due to the halftime show rehearsal schedule.

Martinez has made a habit of saying yes. He studied abroad in Rome alone, has attended concerts and games solo, and left the comfort of the Bay Area for USD. When he was a student at USD, his friends used to joke that he was always everywhere on campus — Associated Student Government, a pre-law fraternity, a civil discourse ambassador, M.E.Ch.A and Student Support Services and working for USD Athletics — always chasing the next experience.

For him, the halftime show was just another side quest, a chance to experience more.

“Just go for it,” Martinez said, when asked what advice he’d give others. “You never know what could come out of the experience.”