Carrying football footage

Convergence is the big play at NFL Films, where Network Director Steve Eager made the call to merge voice, video and data on a new IP infrastructure.

Walk into the headquarters of NFL Films and you get a sense of achievement. A lobby display showcases dozens of Emmy Awards for sports programs. Move through the building and signs of creativity abound: Editors work busily on film footage while technicians prepare a sound stage for an audition. And, of course, football is everywhere – from cafeteria trays bearing images of gridiron greats to hundreds of photos of star players and memorabilia lining the walls.

Just the place for an unabashed football fan who has a background in creative writing – Steve Eager, director of network and systems administration. Eager says he thrives in this setting, and his professional achievements bear that out.

Eager joined NFL Films in December 1994, when the IT “infrastructure” was a minicomputer and three stand-alone PCs, and the entire IT department comprised himself and the CIO, Dave Franza. Since then, Eager has helped NFL Films shift to networked PCs and Macs for production, managed the construction and operation of temporary computer networks at five Super Bowls, and designed the network at the new 200,000-square-foot headquarters complex in Mount Laurel, N.J., the company opened last September.

Eager, 40, began his career in 1985 as a credit analyst at First Fidelity Bank. Intrigued by a program used to analyze financial statements, Eager worked to improve its reporting capabilities. That took him to the MIS department, where he developed various financial reporting programs. “It was far more interesting than analyzing financial statements,” he says.

Not nearly as interesting as the work he’s done in his eight years at NFL Films, though. Eager came to the National Football League subsidiary as a systems analyst, and quickly took on greater responsibilities as NFL Films began relying more on PCs and networking. Today, Eager manages six of the 16 people, including three contract workers, now comprising the IT department.

Eager says designing the new corporate network has been his biggest challenge. Whether you’re editing a film or developing the corporate network, NFL Films management inspires people to be creative and take chances.

The philosophy is, “If you’re going to fail, fail spectacularly,” Eager says, quoting Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films.

Bearing that in mind, Eager shunned traditional network approaches that kept data and voice distinct, and built a Cisco-based converged 1G bit/sec Ethernet backbone to carry voice, data and video applications over an IP infrastructure. 1G bit/sec links reach out to the company’s 25 Windows NT and 2000 servers and 100M-bit/sec connections to 325 user desktops. A VPN secures remote access.

“A lot of places wouldn’t let you put voice, data and video over the same line. No one questioned that here,” Eager says.

It’s this attitude, and more, that Eager says makes him feel very much at home at NFL Films. “It’s a very relaxed environment, which makes it easy to work here,” he says. Plus, the creative writer in him likes working around film editors, cameramen and artists.

Besides football, Eager loves music. He listens to all types and has more than 800 CDs in his collection. A power lifter, Eager munches on a protein bar as he provides a tour of a computer room with servers named for famous NFL coaches and players.

His demeanor reflects the culture of the organization – relaxed yet passionate about the work. NFL Films has documented thousands of games since the early 1960s. And now, with the help of a desktop application Eager developed, employees can search digitized footage of games to locate particular plays, camera angles, even weather conditions.

The relaxed atmosphere of the office contrasts sharply with the “big event” of the year – the Super Bowl – for which Eager must set up a 100M-bit/sec Ethernet LAN in a trailer park outside the host stadium. The film crew works in about 20 production trucks in the compound, on 70 workstations, to support delivery of a live satellite feed to all international broadcasters covering the game.

Eager arrives at the site about 17 days before the game, handling everything from laying cable to ensuring that the network is secure and stable. He uses industry-standard security, and Cisco Works and What’s Up Gold for network monitoring. An outside vendor handles physical security – “Suffice to say, it’s extremely tight.”

Eager’s most memorable Super Bowl was the 2000 game in Atlanta, where a freak ice storm wreaked havoc on operations.

“It was 35 degrees with freezing rain, and we were riding around in golf carts running fiber,” Eager recalls. “Those were the most challenging two weeks I’ve spent in this job.”

When the game starts Eager and his staff are on call, but they can relax because their work is essentially done. “People say, ‘Wow, you get to go to the Super Bowl every year.’ But it’s a grinding pace,” Eager says. Still, he wouldn’t want to work anywhere else.

Violino is a freelance writer covering business and technology. He can be reached at bviolino@optonline.net .

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