Mapping Out the X’s and O’s of Staging a Spectacle : Logistics: It takes more than a year’s worth of planning for a 60-minute game and a halftime show that lasts 10 minutes.

Like an astronomer charting the cosmos, architect Jerry Anderson spends much of his time grappling with enormous numbers. He is the man chosen by the National Football League each year to prepare the Super Bowl site--in today’s case, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

The planning starts more than a year in advance, he said. By the time the Dallas Cowboys and Buffalo Bills take the field, he will have orchestrated the placement of more than 1,000 telephone lines, 150 portable toilets, an 8,000-foot warehouse for souvenirs, 28 platforms for still cameras and more than 60,000 feet of electrical cable feeding television trucks and transmitters.

The growing magnitude of the game and the expanding nature of related events on the Super Bowl grounds has added enormously to the complex logistics of staging the spectacle, he said.

Just to handle post-game interviews, a small army of workers has had to build from scratch a 10,000-foot media center, complete with carpeting and fixtures.

“We could keep a plywood factory busy for months,” Anderson said. “We move our crews in a full month ahead of the game . . . (and) we work about 12 hours a day, seven days a week, right up to game time.”

Radio City Music Hall, which is producing the halftime show that will feature Michael Jackson, has been planning it for more than a year, producer-director Don Mischer said.

All that for this: “We have five minutes to set up, 10 minutes (to perform) and five minutes to get everything off the field,” Mischer said.

Under those constraints, the halftime crew will piece together a 75-foot stage weighing more than 10 tons. It will enter the field in 22 sections, each rolling on balloon tires designed to avoid damaging the turf, Mischer said. Each will have its own assembly team and manager.

With January rains cutting heavily into rehearsal time, the nine-time Emmy award winner said there was more than a little anxiety as game time approached.

“It’s fun . . . (but) there is a lot of pressure,” Mischer said. “It’s something I occasionally wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning and think about.”

One of the biggest logistic nightmares was the construction of the NFL Experience, a 700,000-square-foot theme park at the Rose Bowl. Three weeks ago, Party Planners West of Marina del Rey began erecting 60 tents to house the Experience’s Hall of Fame exhibits, skills tests for children, a massive card show, food outlets and other attractions. Party Planners also set up 12 additional tents--the largest covering 42,000 square feet--to accommodate the NFL’s official tailgate party for 8,500 VIP guests of the league.

“The last week is sometimes really rough,” said Patricia Ryan, who runs Party Planners. “Some people don’t understand. . . . To them, we’re doing a party. It’s beyond that. It’s long hours. We’re all exhausted, all our feet hurt. Everybody is at their max.”

And that means thousands of beleaguered workers.

“Just take the stadium--there are probably 8,000 to 10,000 people working on it out there, from the standpoint of ushers, ticket takers, security guards and the guys out there pounding the stakes to put the tents up,” said the NFL’s Jim Steeg, whose job is to direct Anderson’s work and handle contracts, insurance demands and other matters.

“The number of people working on it is scary,” he said.