A behind-the-scenes look at a live game telecast

The truck serves as the nerve center of every college football broadcast. Cory McCartney/SI

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ATLANTA -- They easily manage 58 monitors, seven cameras and page after page of commercials and sponsored graphics that must be worked into the telecast, but one of the few things that actually rattles the Raycom/Lincoln Financial crew producing the Army-Georgia Tech game is a rapper.

"It's a guy on the sideline in blue jeans, suspenders and a straw hat," says producer David Barringer as one of the sideline cameras cuts in close. "Anyone know who that is?"

The sight of Andre 3000 -- one half of Grammy Award-winning duo Outkast -- caused a moment of distress in the production truck last Saturday. As the DUET operator typed the recording artist's name into an on-screen graphic, fingers crossed: "I hope [play-by-play announcer] Steve [Martin] says this right," Barringer said as the live feed cuts to Andre 3000. It went off perfectly. To the 600,000 homes watching the ACC regional telecast, it was just another moment in a typical college football telecast.

We've come to take the magic of delivering the game into our homes and favorite sports bars for granted. Sitting inside the Raycom/Lincoln Financial production truck, though, you quickly understand that turning the madness that takes place on and around the field into a seamless program is all about adaptation for the sake of continuity.

"It's a constant adjustment," Barringer said. "You might be set to do this and then a flag or this happens, then a big play or a turnover backs it up."

Barringer oversees a crew of over 50 people that centers around the mobile headquarters of the production trailer. This main production trailer directs the finished product, the satellite truck and the sports media center, which creates the down and distance, red zone and yellow first-down lines on the field. The two-day set up, broadcast and breakdown comes at a weekly cost of $90,000. This seems like a pretty fair price when considering all the work that goes into the broadcast.

The gameday scene

Inside the production truck, the pregame show is winding down and assistant director Pat O'Reilly is looking at a hand-held clock, counting down the length of a segment including profiles of the ACC Players of the Week. "Nine-and-a-half fun-filled minutes," she calls out to pregame producer Beverly Rumley, before marking off the final, taped package on the docket.

While O'Reilly counts out the last 30 seconds before the pregame show goes off the air, Barringer comes bounding in, giving a fist pound to each member of the crew before taking Rumley's seat in the front row alongside director Roy Alfers and technical manager Terry DeCarlis as he puts his headset on.

"Hello, Steve and Doc," Barringer says over the headset to Martin and color analyst Doc Walker as they go over plans for a pregame segment on Yellow Jackets running back Tashard Choice.

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