Behind the scenes: What you don't see before a Lions game at Ford Field -

On a snowy Sunday morning in downtown Detroit, Ford Field is slowly coming to life.

Three hours before kickoff of the Lions-Panthers game, a small handful of players have made their way out of the locker room to begin stretching. Off to the side Fox 2’s pregame show, “Game Day Live,” hosted by Lions play-by-play man Dan Miller, is on the air (although, fortunately as it turns out, in commercial at the moment).

Seven stories above, Bryan Bender, the Lions’ director of event presentation, and Brian Haberkorn, game presentation and production manager, are showing off their facility’s dazzling, sprawling control room. Well, rooms, technically. There are three, in all.

The first, just inside the entrance, essentially mirrors a TV truck and features — among other things — a wall of monitors displaying all 19 of the in-stadium camera feeds available for broadcast on the Ford Field scoreboard. Next is an enclosed space that houses all the equipment required to keep things up and running, plus three high-powered air conditioning vents meant to prevent said equipment from overheating.

The Ford Field control room.

Bender and Haberkorn are standing in room No. 3, an open-air space that overlooks the playing surface, a few yards down from the press box. This is where Bender works his magic during the game, with the help of a DJ and audio and LED controls, the goal at most times being to “make it a party” for the fans in attendance.

Everything’s ready for when the doors open and fans stream in, a little under an hour from now.

And then the lights go out.

Haberkorn glances over at Bender. “We didn’t shut them off,” he tells him, although Bender already seems aware of this fact. He’s busy studying the control panel behind him, and relays that one of the panels reads “blackout.” Bender gets on the phone. After a minute, maybe two, someone, somewhere in the building, remedies the situation. The field is illuminated again, and business carries on as usual.

Haberkorn shrugs. “You never know what’s gonna happen up here.”

Everyone sees the game, the three hours when the Lions are playing in front of their home crowd. Getting to that point requires the efforts of an untold number of people, working all week leading up to kickoff. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at some of what it takes to prep Ford Field, right up until the gates opened for last Sunday’s game against the Panthers.

Save for game days, the Lions’ players, coaches and front office operate almost exclusively out of the franchise’s Allen Park facility. However, Ford Field does house a sizable segment of the administrative staff.

On Tuesday morning, several of the higher-ups — VP of stadium operations Todd Argust, corporate communications manager Ellen Trudell, senior director of corporate communications Ben Manges, director of security Darren Johnson, director of facilities Fred Reddig and director of operations Kristen Dale — are breaking from inside a conference room tucked away on Ford Field’s second floor when Dale excuses herself.

“I have to get down there for the tree,” she says.

By the time fans enter for Sunday’s game against the Panthers, the concourse inside of Gate G off St. Antoine Street will be a focal point of activity. A 32-foot-tall Christmas tree hauled in from Dutchman Farms in Manton, Michigan, will stand, decorated and lit, over an area where fans can get pictures taken with Santa.

Now, though, the tree is lying on the concourse floor, still wrapped in what must be enough twine to stretch goal line to goal line. Upon her arrival at the locale, Dale looks on to ensure that the tree is hoisted into the proper position. One of the seemingly infinite tasks she has on her plate, any given week.

The 32-foot-tall Christmas tree Ford Field had delivered from Manton, Michigan.

It all leads up to Sunday (or Thursday or Monday, depending on the Lions’ schedule). Those game days, Dale takes point position in the Lions’ primary operations booth, which comes with a view of the entire seating bowl. (The Lions requested that the exact location of the booth remain undisclosed, for security purposes.)

Along the front row of the booth, Dale sits alongside a representative from S.A.F.E. Management, which provides security staffing for Ford Field on game days, as well as an operator for the building’s in-house text line — fans can report unruly fans simply by sending a message to 69050. Dale then helps make the call on how to handle any incident.

Also in the ops booth are reps from the state and local police, the Detroit Crime Commission, fire and EMS services, SWAT and special agents, like those from the terrorism task force. On hand, and hopefully never needed, are a bomb squad, HAZMAT unit and snipers.

“We want to be proactive,” says Johnson, whose title as security director comes with a lot of heavy responsibility. Later, he adds, “If something bad ever does happen, we want to be able to stop it before it becomes a worse situation.”

Ford Field ahead of Sunday’s game between the Panthers and Lions.

Ed Sheeran performed a concert at Ford Field on Sept. 8. When the festivities ended, Reddig and his staff had less than 48 hours to get the field cleared and in playing condition before the Lions opened their season on Monday night against the New York Jets. (Spoiler: That game went poorly.)

The window to prep the field was even smaller in late October — Luke Bryan’s show on Friday night, Oct. 26, preceded a Sunday afternoon Lions-Seahawks game. The frantic turnover happens several times a year inside these walls. “This is sort of old hat for them,” Manges says.

Still, there is a certain nuance to what can be scheduled, and when. That Bryan-to-Seahawks game flip was about as tight as the operations staff allows it to get.

“If it was the Beyoncé concert …” Argust starts, before Dale finishes his thought:

“We might not make that one.”

“There’s so much more involved in the stage,” Argust says.

Friday, ahead of the Panthers’ visit to Ford Field, the facility was blocked off for the Detroit Parade Company’s annual black-tie fundraiser, the Hob Nobble Gobble. (Musical guest: Jesse McCartney.) So, at the same time as the Christmas tree ascended into its spot for the holiday season, a team of workers was down on the field, covering the actual field with a layer of visqueen and then one of interlocking, plastic flooring.

Of course, post-Hob Nobble Gobble, all of that has to come up before an NFL game can be played. To make it happen, Reddig will work what he estimates as a 22-hour shift, starting at the close of the parade event Friday night and extending through about 8 p.m. Saturday, when the final piece of flooring is pulled.

Sunday, he has to be back on the field by 6:30 a.m., to complete the NFL-required Clegg test, which measures the hardness of the playing surface.

“So if there’s 72 hours in a weekend?” Manges asks.

“That’s my longest weekend,” Reddig responds.

Ford Field’s yard lines and numbers are inlaid in the turf, but the midfield Lions logo, end zone logos and any league-mandated initiatives at the 25-yard lines (“Salute to Service,” “Crucial Catch’) must be painted and/or touched up before each home game. You might recall that, prior to the Lions’ win over New England this season, Bill Belichick expressed concern over footing near the midfield logo.

After the Lions-Bears game on Thanksgiving, those specialized paint jobs will be scrubbed for the following Friday’s MAC championship. The process will reverse between Friday and that Sunday, when the Lions host the Rams.

There’s also two days’ worth of Michigan high school football finals (eight games in all) to worry about, as well as rehearsals — beginning the Monday after Detroit plays Carolina — for the Thanksgiving Day halftime show performance by Mike Posner. The stage for Posner’s show began to arrive Tuesday, same as the tree and the flooring.

Through it all, the field conditions have to remain pristine.

“That’s one of the main reasons why the NFL has us test like that,” Reddig says, “to make sure we don’t have those issues on the field.”

Stenciled on the concrete steps of Ford Field’s seating bowl, every 20 rows, are the section and row number of where you’re at in the stadium. Ever noticed them? Probably not. They’re not really meant to help guide anyone to their seat.

Rather, it’s another part of the wide-sweeping security measures implemented within the building.

There are two banks of monitors within the Ford Field ops center — one, a set of three split screens, positioned above Dale’s seat; the other, a quartet of screens forming a box, hangs on a wall inside the room, across from a conference table. Should an incident occur within the crowd, the ops team can spin one of their available cameras on the area, using those painted numbers as a guide.

The cameras themselves are so powerful, says Johnson, that “we can see the pimple on your face.”

After every home game, Argust leads a review of every reported incident. Even if the situation gets resolved immediately after it occurs, the Lions’ ops team may circle back later to deal with it further.

On one game day, the Lions received a report that a fan had vomited at his seat (reported, as one might expect, by the people sitting in front of him.) The next day, Argust determined that the fan in question was in a season-ticket holder’s seat. He called up that season-ticket holder to ask who had attended the game, if he’d given his tickets to anyone.

“No, that was me,” the fan told him. “I had too much to drink.”

Any fan removed from a game is required by the league to then complete a “Code of Conduct” course online, at the personal cost of $250. Technically, those fans are not allowed back inside any NFL stadium until completing that class. The Lions, Argust assures, do not use facial-recognition technology to prevent anyone from entering, but a banned person found in attendance could be slapped with a trespassing charge.

Argust, who previously worked for the Browns and Steelers, says that by and large Lions fans are a well-behaved lot.

“In Cleveland, we might get 20 arrests in one game,” he says. “Here, we maybe have 10 per season.”

Still, the overwhelming priority for the operations team is the fan experience and, more to the point, fan safety. That’s where the Detroit Crime Commission comes in. A private, 501(c) nonprofit organization, the commission provides a “geofence” around Ford Field on game days, at a radius of 2 miles. What that geofence allows, in essence, is for the Lions’ security team to monitor social media traffic for trigger words.

Johnson tells the story of a fan who promised, prior to a Lions home game, that he would jump on the field if his post received 10,000 likes. The geofence flagged that post. Johnson then utilized the Lions’ ticketing database to find the person in question, and he gave him a call.

“You’re not planning to go to jail tonight, are you?” Johnson remembers saying.

“No, no,” the fan responded, “I was just joking. How did you get this number?”

All these security measures no doubt will strike Big Brother chords for some people. The Lions would counter that it’s necessary, “proactive,” as Johnson put it. The goal for everyone should be to come downtown, enjoy the game and the events surrounding it in a safe environment.

The organization has poured an abundance of resources into making that happen, so much so that even Homeland Security has stopped in to study the relationship between the Lions’ ops team and its large security footprint.

“We’re a trendsetter on a lot of stuff in this city,” Argust says.

Jarrad Davis runs onto the field before the Lions’ game against the Panthers on Sunday.

Prior to the 2017 season, the Lions poured $100 million of renovations into Ford Field. The suites, seating areas near the concession stands, artwork throughout the stadium … just about everything received a touch-up, in some shape or another. The result, orchestrated by the same Rossetti firm that initially designed Ford Field, was so successful that other franchises have come through to check out the updates firsthand. Just this week, the Panthers, now under new ownership, sent a group to Detroit ahead of their Week 11 game.

For Bender, all other upgrades paled in comparison to the Lions’ new video boards and audio equipment. The Ford Field audio “went from (among the) worst five in the league,” Bender says, “to top 3. It’s probably the best.”

This is Bender’s 23rd season with the Lions, the first several of which came at the Silverdome. There, the game-day presentation team had access to three cameras and the most basic of scoreboards. Now, Bender and Haberkorn can pull up a cornucopia of graphics and stats, and display them almost anywhere they choose around the stadium.

They have the main video boards, of course, but also what they call Ford Field’s “super columns,” two massive, cylandrical showpieces — one by Gate A, the other Gate G — whose graphics wrap around 360 degrees. Haberkorn clicks a button and, to his left, a giant image of Lions safety Quandre Diggs appears on the nearest column, urging the crowd to make noise.

Also at the graphics team’s disposal are the ribbon display boards that wrap around the club level. As of just this week, those boards now display the script to the Lions’ pregame pump-up video, narrated by Jeff Daniels.

Of the aforementioned 19 cameras Detroit’s production crew has available to it, two are positioned on the crossbars — one at either end of the field — and there are a total of four positioned over each end zone, splitting that area into quadrants. The Lions’ production team will share some of these feeds with whichever network is broadcasting the game. (The ops team has to be on that process, too. For Sunday’s game, Fox will station between two and three trucks on the loading dock off Ford Field’s south side; for the Thanksgiving game, CBS will bring at least five trucks.)

The 4K images produced by several of the stadium’s cameras can be enhanced … and enhanced … and enhanced … down to intricate detail, lest the directors up top decide to show the fans a view of a controversial call.

Bender might have more fun with what they choose not to show. Back when Lovie Smith was the Chicago coach, before the Lions installed their brilliant new video boards, he found himself weighing a play for a potential challenge. As he did, he looked up to the scoreboard, arms folded, waiting to see a replay.

It didn’t come.

“That’s our little home-field advantage,” Bender says, smiling.

A Lions fan enters through one of the Ford Field security checkpoints.

Approximately 60 percent of Ford Field’s attendees enter through Gate A, situated off Brush Street, so it makes sense that Argust and Jon Seibt, director of operations for S.A.F.E. Detroit, begin their pregame status check from this location. Before the gates open, approximately two hours prior to kickoff, they’ll take a lap together around the interior of the building.

There are 50 magnometers (more commonly, metal detectors) outside the A Gate, to help facilitate the swarm of fans that pass through that entrance. By comparison, the gate with the next highest number, B, has 10. All of those devices must be set up the day before a game, then plugged in and tested, one by one. With the Panthers in town Sunday, three are on the fritz.

The ops command center keeps tabs on the crowd flow outside, at times opting to reroute people away from Gates A and G to less-populated doors.

Those metal detectors, though, also must be broken down and moved before fans start heading back out the doors. How a game goes dictates when, and with what volume, the crowd exits. During that blowout Lions loss to the Jets in Week 1, people started filing out about midway through the third quarter, as the Jets took a 21-point lead.

Argust and Seibt work clockwise around the stadium, moving from Gate A to Gate B, where the Bud Light Party Zone is situated. According to Manges, that’s one of the four most heavily trafficked spots before any given home game, and especially during the popular “Power Hour” that runs right after the gates open and offers fans discounted food and drinks. The Blitz on the stadium’s upper concourse, Social at Gate D and the Corner Bar near Gate F are the other popular hubs.

Their trek around the outside of Ford Field’s lower-bowl sections proves uneventful, so Argust and Seibt pass along the all clear, then post up about 40 feet from the entryway. Once the fans begin flowing into the building, the focus changes.

“You’re inside pretty much just dealing with any idiots,” Seibt says. “That’s what it comes down to.”

If all goes according to the intricately laid plan, any forthcoming issues will be minor — an intoxicated fan, a floor made slippery by people tracking in snow, a hiccup at a concession stand. There’s no telling what the day holds.

At 10:55, as a final wake-up call, the Ford Field speakers blast two familiar sounds: a train horn and a lion’s roar, both to be heard again anytime the home team scores.

At 10:58, two minutes early, the call comes over the wireless headsets worn by key members of the ops teams: “Gates.”

The doors fly open.

It’s showtime.

(All photos by Allison Farrand / For The Athletic)

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