Behind The Scenes

SportsCenter’s SB XLVI coverage to feature reports from Durham, Conn.

SportsCenter’s Super Bowl coverage will only go halfway Sunday morning — as in halfway between the Patriots’ Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. and the Giants’ MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

SportsCenter will be in Durham, Conn., the geographical midway point between the home stadiums of the teams playing later that day in Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis.

Karl Ravech, Baseball Tonight host and SportsCenter anchor, will be in Durham at 7 a.m. ET, reporting from the new Coginchaug High School football field, where Giants and Patriots fans are expected to be “preparing” for the game.

Sunday morning’s SportsCenter also will present a piece taped recently, when Ravech visited Durham to check out the community and take its Patriots-Giants pulse.

“Being in that environment Thursday night was a lot of fun,” Ravech said.

“The crowd was energetic, very passionate about their teams, and relishing the fact that they are smack dab in the middle of the Giants-Patriots rivalry. Sunday, we expect a crowd of between 300 and 500 people there to celebrate the greatest unofficial holiday of the year, the Super Bowl.

Normally behind an anchor desk, Ravech liked returning to the field.

“For me, my television roots are in reporting,” he said, “so this is an opportunity to get out of the studio, interact with the fans and be creative in the way we present the story. I’m looking forward to Sunday.”

This Patriots-Giants rivalry “divides” even ESPN families. SportsCenter anchor Linda Cohn and her son Dan, 16, will be in Indianapolis Sunday. Cohn will be rooting for her Giants in her Eli Manning jersey; Dan will sport his Julian Edelman Patriots gear.

“This might be my No. 2 experience with Dan,” Cohn told the Hartford Courant, “right after the mother-son moment in which I gave birth to him.”

How did the idea to visit Durham emerge?

“At the weekend [SportsCenter production] meeting last week, we wanted to get out in front of Super Bowl weekend and kicked around some ideas,” said Don Skwar, senior coordinating producer.

Rich Schroeder, our producer, brought up the equidistant thought, and from there we figured out how we could do it, with whom, and when. Missy Motha, our coordinating producer, and several of the associate producers assigned to the show all were instrumental in getting it finalized.”

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