"We still run a lot of cabling, but in the past we had to run miles and miles of cable," he said. "Using wireless bridge technologies and -enabled devices, we've been able to streamline this cost effectively and still provide a reliable, enhanced service."

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 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.

Tasks included setting up a media center for about 4,000 journalists at a Tampa convention center, where Port and his team built a wireless network with a dozen access points to support roughly 500 simultaneous connections.

"The biggest challenges were maintaining security and at the same time being able to handle a large volume of consecutive connections in a relatively small area," Port said.