PHILADELPHIA - It’s 90 minutes before the first arena football game in Philadelphia’s history, and a convoy of about a dozen people rounds the corner of a subterranean corridor deep in the Wachovia Center and starts to walk onto the floor of the arena.

On the field — 70 yards of padded turf laid over the hockey ice on the arena floor — crews are rehearsing the pre-game festivities, which involve exceptionally loud music, carbon-dioxide fog, Harley-Davidsons and dancing girls.

A moment earlier, all of this would have been fascinating to watch, consisting as it did of loud noises, young flesh, and bright and shiny objects. But now, as the convoy moves onto the floor, it suddenly seems duller than watching AstroTurf grow.

The man who leads the parade is slender and of average height. Wears black pants with black, satin stripes down the sides, black boots with sharp toes, a black turtleneck, and a gray-and-black sort of jacket. His hair is blond and shag-cut in a style that would look hopelessly archaic on you and I, but perfect on him.

“Hi, I’m Jon,” he says to people as he is introduced around, offering his hand and flashing an easy smile. “Nice to meet you.”

They say that fans don’t go to games to see owners own, and, until Sunday in the Wachovia Center, that was probably true. But when Jon Bon Jovi became the majority owner of the Philadelphia Soul, a new franchise in the Arena Football League, that changed.

The league averaged about 10,000 fans per game last year, its first broadcast on NBC, the network that, with Microsoft, is a partner in MSNBC. The Soul has sold that many season tickets, and Sunday sold out the arena for its inaugural game.

The rookie owner attributed it all to Philadelphia, a town so hungry for a winner to call its own, it was willing to embrace a team it didn’t know in a sport it had never seen. But he’s worked the local and national media like a first-time author flogging a book. Before its first game, the team had already donated $100,000 to local charities, and management has made it clear it wants to be part of the community.

“I couldn’t have done this in New York,” Bon Jovi said before the game as he walked around the field as if he owned it, which he does. The media wouldn’t have cared, he said, and the fans wouldn’t have embraced him as they have in Philly.

Bon Jovi is a self-confessed football junkie and a Giants fan who was on the team’s bench — “I was the mascot” — during their last Super Bowl victory in 1991.

He got to know the Giants because he’d met and became friends with one of their coaches when Bon Jovi was on tour with the Rolling Stones in Europe. The coach wasn’t much known outside of New York at the time, but he grew up to be Bill Belichick, coach of the Patriots and winner of two of the last three Super Bowls.

They’re friends for the most basic of reasons.

“I like music,” says Belichick, who confesses to being “a closet drummer — I don’t want to get up on stage. I just beat on the drums in private to release some tension.”

“I like football,” says Bon Jovi.

Belichick, wearing a black leather jacket with a Super Bowl XXXVIII logo embroidered on the back, came to Philly to be with his buddy on his first official day as an owner. For the first time since winning the Super Bowl, he wasn’t the center of attention.

Doug Flutie showed up for the game, too, and, like Belichick, was relegated to back-up celebrity status.

Not that Bon Jovi was seeking attention. As an owner, his philosophy seems to be to promote the team, but not to try to run it. There’s a lot more Wellington Mara in him as an owner than Jerry Jones or Dan Snyder.

He did an interview for NFL Films, strolling around the field with Belichick, talking football, relaxed and having fun.

Belichick talked about being on tour in Europe with Bon Jovi and realizing that a concert is very much like a football game, with the performers arriving hours early, going over their game plan, experiencing the adrenaline rush, putting everything they have into the performance, then needing hours to come down after the show.

Bon Jovi talked about what he called the “purity” of the AFL. “You see these guys playing,” he says. “They’re not making a lot of money.” But they love the game, and they’re grateful for the opportunity to be paid anything to play it and to have fans who care whether they win or lose.

He also talked about the importance of the team. “Rock and roll’s a team sport, too,” he said. His band has been together more than 20 years, from when they were just another Jersey band trying to make a name for themselves as Bruce Springsteen had done before him. “To have longevity, you have to gel as a group,” he said.

Once the party started and the Harleys rolled onto the field and the girls, wearing not a great deal, danced and the fireworks blew smoke into the rafters, Bon Jovi got out of the way. Sam Moore, the Philadelphia singer who first recorded “Soul Man,” was the pregame entertainment.

The fans were into it from the start, lustily booing the introductions of the New Orleans Voodoo as if they actually had any idea who the Voodoo players were.

And Bon Jovi was just Jon, rookie owner, happy to be here, happy to meet you.

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