There was a flurry of activity all around and inside Sun Life Stadium this morning as preparations for this Sunday's Pro Bowl and Super Bowl XLIV the following Sunday continue. Anyone familiar with how the stadium, parking lots and field look for a typical Miami Dolphins home game will not recognize the area now.

From the endless rows of construction trailers, security tents, delivery trucks and support vehicles filling up the parking lot outside to the scores of workers with leaf blowers and hoses cleaning the inside seating bowl and field workers spray painting the sidelines and yard markers on the field, it's an amazing sight to see. There already is a full-blown television set sitting in the north corner of the east end zone and the auxiliary press seating is taking shape just below the baseball press box.

And this is just the final preparation.

"We've been here since right after the Orange Bowl, so there has been construction in the stadium and changes having to be made to the physical plan all the way through from literally the day after the Orange Bowl," said Frank Supovitz, NFL Senior Vice President of Events. "What we're doing now is finishing up all of the construction up in the stands for out international broadcasting position booths and our control center, which is up there on the 40-yardline and is almost complete, and finishing up the outside and Game Day Fan Plaza. Tailgate is the only thing that can wait and we have another week to finish that up because it won't be operating on Pro Bowl Sunday."

When it comes to the playing field, which currently looks immaculate and as green and well-mowed as the finest golf courses, the true story behind what it took to get it that way is mind-boggling. Ed Mangan, NFL Field Director, has worked the past 20 Super Bowls, including each of the previous four to be played at this venue, and among those on his crew is the legendary George Toma. Nicknamed "The Sod God," and the "Marquis de Sod," Toma has gotten the field ready for every Super Bowl going back to Super Bowl I.

Mangan explained just how lengthy a process it is to get a natural grass field like the one being used for these next two big games ready – and it is considerably longer than retrofitting your back yard after a cold snap or a drought.

"We usually go a couple of years in advance, especially in a natural grass field. This isn't your ordinary household grass," Mangan said. "We start this grass a year-and-a-half ahead of time and put it on a program - fertility levels, nutrients, everything - and baby sit it for that year solid to bring it in here. It's a hybrid Bermuda grass, a southern hybrid grass, and this is what's used primarily in the southern climates."

The grass actually sat at a sod farm in Alabama until it was time to transport it down to South Florida on 30 trucks, all the while making sure it is being protected from the elements and maintaining its growth rate. When Mangan's team arrived with all 92,000 square feet of dedicated sod the first thing they did was remove all of the existing sod that was in place for the Orange Bowl and the Dolphins' last game of the season against Pittsburgh, stripped down the surface, re-tilled it, re-graded the field with a laser grader and then installed the new grass that weekend of January 9th and 10th over 16 hours. The old turf was grounded up into a top soil and hauled off site to be used for recycled use.

There are anywhere from 30 to 35 people on Mangan's crew and he also utilizes some of the stadium staff and outside contractors to move some of the materials off site. All told he is looking at thousands of man hours, and the unseasonably cold temperatures that first weekend added some man hours to the project and caused a little bit of concern.

"That was very much a negative as we fought with it quite a bit," Mangan said. "That first day we laid grass on that Saturday I think it was 36-degrees, raining and the wind chill was in the 20s, so it was pretty miserable. That entire week with the temperatures we had set us back quite a bit and turned our Bermuda to go dormant. So we brought our covers out to cover the field and left it covered for almost a week to help warm it back up again and help get it back in shape. Luckily the weather has turned for us into some really nice weather for growing grass."

With the final bit of painting, mowing, watering and fertilization going on, Mangan and his crew now get to see how the grass holds up to some of the show rehearsals and other event preparation that will take place on the field and then they will jump back out there and spruce up the paint and the rest of the field. Once the Pro Bowl ends, both end zones will be removed and replaced with fresh sod and then painted with the names of the two participating teams – the Colts and Saints. The Pro Bowl logos on the field and the sod they sit on also will be replaced with the Super Bowl XLIV logo.

And when the Super Bowl is over and the world's largest road show pulls out of South Florida, Mangan said that carefully prepared sod will remain for a few days before being pulled up to make way for a monster truck show scheduled for the stadium - and he and his crew, along with Supovitz will immediately start looking ahead to Super Bowl XLV next year in Dallas.

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