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NFL's IT Chief Gears Up For His 25th Super Bowl

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-predict-the-lions-will-somehow-manage-to-lose dept.

BobB-nw writes with this excerpt from NetworkWorld: "NFL IT guru David Port claims he doesn't have a favorite football team, but on Sunday he'll be working his 25th Super Bowl. As the league's vice president of information technology, Port and his IT staff are responsible for building a temporary network to support NFL staff and thousands of journalists during Super Bowl week. Port starts preparing for each Super Bowl two years in advance, working with the city and venues where IT operations and media professionals will be based. More intensive planning starts about 11 months before the big game. Port explained that the NFL essentially built a small data center with IBM blade servers at the temporary headquarters in a local Marriott near the Super Bowl site. 'We built out an infrastructure with approximately 300 computers, PCs and laptops, and wired and wireless networks that are used for NFL core operations, for game production and business operations. Much of it is also for media,' Port said." CNet is running a related story about the technology behind the Super Bowl, focusing on some of the visual effects viewers will see, as well as the hardware that makes everything happen.

2 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Dave is a great guy by Controlio · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Having personally worked with him on SBXL, I can tell you that Dave is a great guy who knows what he's doing. The level of planning is amazing, not to mention the equipment they travel. They bring their own phone network (refusing to use even brand new state-of-the-art switches the house may own), a ridiculous amount of fiber, have fatter data pipes than some small countries, and are completely flexible to individual needs. It's completely night-and-day from any other sports event (including the World Series, Stanley Cup, and the Final Four).

    He also has a bunch of really cool toys. Between him and the FCC, they can pinpoint an unlicensed RF transmitter within 5 feet in under 3 minutes and have it shut down. And yes, this happens multiple times in each super bowl, usually with foreign media.

    1. Re:Dave is a great guy by gtbritishskull · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I am sure that the football programs lose money. They are not intended to fund themselves from ticket sales. But, a lot of alumni come back to the colleges to watch the games. This makes them more connected to the college and more likely to donate money to the college. I do not have a cite, but I remember reading about the correlation between alumni donations and football wins and it was definitely a positive correlation. I don't think that we wouldn't have colleges without football, but they would have to find some other way to get their alumni involved to get them to donate or raise tuition.