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" It&amp;#039;s the greatest show you won&amp;#039;t see. When the gun fires at halftime during Super Bowl XLIV, this Sunday, football fans and music will focus on The Who performing at the Super Bowl halftime show, wondering whether Pete Townsend will find a way to slip a profanity or wardrobe malfunction into his performance. (Believe us, he won&amp;#039;t.)  But the real drama comes before and after Roger Daltry and friends take the stage. A crew of 600 will have only a few minutes to construct and dismantle the stage on which the band will perform.   &amp;quot;Six minutes on and six minutes off the stage,&amp;quot; says the man responsible for the halftime show, Charles Coplin, vice president of special events for the NFL. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s just no way to describe that other than sheer terror.&amp;quot;   The halftime show is a triumph of logistics. A normal stadium-size rock show can take a day or longer to set up and take down. The set for the Super Bowl halftime show, on the other hand, needs to be set up and broken down in minutes, while CBS airs some expensive commercials.   If something goes wrong, more than a few people will notice: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s the most watched show in the world; there&amp;#039;s no getting around it. How many times do you go to work and say, &amp;#039;What I do today, everybody&amp;#039;s gonna see it?&amp;#039; It&amp;#039;s terrifying,&amp;quot; says Coplin. Bumping a goal post or tearing up the sod could delay the game and turn into a full-fledged disaster. That&amp;#039;s why the show&amp;#039;s organizers can&amp;#039;t rely on motor vehicles. Instead, the 10-ton stage is broken down into about 25 sections, each one pushed by a crew of about 20 volunteers, who will then become the on-field audience. Watching this process in action, you can almost understand how the pyramids got built.  Under ideal conditions, it&amp;#039;s a scramble, and even potentially dangerous. In rehearsals for this Sunday&amp;#039;s show, four volunteers were injured when a small stage collapsed, and two were injured seriously enough to be transported by medevac helicopter.   However, the last time the Super Bowl was played in Miami, in 2007, the conditions were anything but ideal. It was the first time the Super Bowl took place in a truly torrential downpour. The Artist Known Again as Prince was the halftime performer, and while the soggy field held up under the halftime traffic, another problem arose suddenly.   &amp;quot;I remember walking into the truck and hearing one of our producers saying, &amp;#039;We&amp;#039;ve got two minutes! What do you mean you have no power?!&amp;#039; And when you see the terror in the eyes of the people who you pay to know what they&amp;#039;re doing, it&amp;#039;s sort of like looking at a pilot saying, &amp;#039;What do you mean we have no landing gear?&amp;#039;&amp;quot;   The cause of the problem was straightforward, the solution anything but.   &amp;quot;When the stage was brought out, a cord and one of the stagehands took two leads and went like this&amp;quot; Coplin says, mimicking holding two ends of giant power cables together. &amp;quot;For twelve minutes. That&amp;#039;s a true story, and, I will tell you, we had power.&amp;quot;  Allen St. John is the author of The Billion Dollar Game: Behind the Scenes of America&amp;#039;s Biggest Day, Super Bowl Sunday, published last month in paperback by Anchor Books. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/sports/a5307/4344900/>