Super Dome Staff Getting Busy For A Big Weekend

It takes a lot of manpower to prepare for the upcoming football games in New Orleans' Mercedes-Benz Superdome...and General Manager Doug Thornton says it ALSO takes a lot of food. He says over an eight-day period, there are two bowl games and two Saints games in the Superdome...and more than $1.5-million in concessions will be sold. To break it down a little further -- five tons of shrimp, 700 gallons of gumbo, 250 gallons of red beans and 2,000 pounds of rice, 15,000 gallons of soda, and about 5,000 yards of hot dogs will be consumed. And the success of an event is often guaged by how much trash is generated. He says a typical Saints game will end with around 55,000 tond of garbage. As for how many people it takes to run a typical game...that's around 2,500. There are about 1,250 SMG employees who do security, ticket-taking, guest services and the like...1,250 to 1,300 food service workers to sell concessions...and 225 New Orleans police officers both inside and outside the stadium.

Tune in later today for a portion of my interview with Thornton, where we talk about how far the stadium has come since the 2005 hurricanes.