Couch Potato: Perfect timing for ‘Full Contact’
By Casey Gillis on Feb. 03, 2010
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TruTV’s “NFL Full Contact” couldn’t come at a better time.
As the season comes to an end with Sunday’s Super Bowl, diehard football fans can still get their fix with the new series, which premieres at 10 p.m. Monday and goes behind the scenes at some of the league’s biggest live events (think the NFL draft, the first game in the new Cowboys Stadium and the international series game in London’s Wembley Stadium).
The premiere episode starts at the very beginning: the 2009 season kickoff in Pittsburgh, an event six months and millions of dollars in the making.
We get to watch as producers, cameramen and security guards tweak last-minute details in the hours before the game and a pre-game concert featuring Tim McGraw and the Black Eyed Peas.
They include everything from filling the park for the concert, which is harder than you might think, to finding missing children to setting fireworks off simultaneously from different spots in the city as the Steelers hit the field.
“It’s a dream come true for a football fan,” an ominous voiceover tells us, “but it’s a nightmare if you’re throwing the party.”
You’ll immediately like veteran cameraman Bob Angelo, who has been “cussed at, run over and sometimes worse” during his 33 seasons on the field.
It’s a job, he says, that requires him to break the rules: “To me, the dotted line is merely a suggestion when I’m trying to get the shot. I’ve got one chance at it.”
The show also follows outspoken, hard-driving event producer Dan Parise, who worries about concert crowds and, later, the arrival of a McGraw impersonator; stage manager Gary Natoli, who has to create a makeshift roof for Peas front woman Fergie’s dressing area, so nobody can sneak a peek while she changes; security guard Sean Oates, an imposing figure who towers above most of the crowds he’s controlling; TV producer Bardia Shah-Rais, who produces the NFL Network’s pre- and post-game shows; and Vice President of Events Frank Supovitz, who oversees all NFL events.
I’m a football fan, but I don’t really think it’s a requirement for enjoying the show. Like any reality series, it’s fascinating to watch people with cool jobs as they operate in high-pressure situations.
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