A. Those wires are actually high-tech fiber optic lines that are used to transmit the images picked up by the over-field camera.

Through contracts with ABC, CBS, ESPN and NBC, Broken Arrow, Okla.-based Skycam provides television viewers with sweeping shots of on-field action.

Tom Landsmann, director of remote operations for the company, said four of the cables are needed to maneuver the camera. In Camp Randall's case, Skycam workers attach two of them to lighting structures on the roof of suite seating on the east side of the stadium and two more to a pair of 20-foot-high trusses attached to the inside of the west side of the stadium.

With the help of computers and an interconnected pulley-and-winch system, one person can maneuver the camera using a joystick.

"Twenty times a second we tell each winch where to go," Landsmann said.

It takes a team of five to set up the system for a game, Landsmann said. The cameras go as low as 12 feet from the field and as high as 80 to 100 feet, he said, but typically hover around 12 to 14 feet.

Landsmann said the technology behind Skycam has been around since the mid 1980s and that it was used for some college broadcasts going back to the late 1980s.

It wasn't until 2002, after four years of trying, that the company got the right to provide video for NFL games, he said, and that's when use of the cameras started to take off.

-- Chris Rickert

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