Journey to the center of the turf.

Over 17 weeks and all across the country, these three young reporters experienced 30 NFL games in 30 stadiums and get closer to the game than any telecast can offer

Welcome to the sidelines of a typical NFL stadium. It doesn't matter which teams are playing, or whether we are shivering outside in an arctic blast or snug inside of a climate-controlled dome. Right now, all that matters is we are here, at the center of the most popular and profitable professional sports league at the turn of the millennium, to watch a football game.

Watch where you step, please, because you are surrounded by very expensive electronic equipment, several million dollars worth. You're not going to find any of this stuff at Radio Shack, either. All around us are spotlights for sideline television shows, sound-recording equipment, television cameras and still cameras. Miles of electric cables slither around our ankles, and we can feel the bass out of those mammoth speakers vibrating in our sternums. There are tripods, headsets, soundboards and mysterious boxes with flashing and blinking lights. I don't know what those are, so please, don't touch them.

All this stuff is going to be used in the next few hours, all for the benefit of football fans like you and me. This game will be beamed out of this stadium to satellites orbiting miles above earth then bounced back down into the homes of millions of television viewers across the world. Then this game will be spliced into television highlight packages, sprinkled with statistics, postgame interviews and analysis, then presented to the folks who either didn't see the game or didn't see enough of the game.

These miracles of modern technology are the mediums that transmit the NFL to most fans today. More than 40 million people will watch Super Bowl 35 later this month, yet Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., site of the NFL's championship game, officially holds just 65,394 people. Thanks to television and technology, a couch potato's view of the NFL never has been better.

If you're a football fan, life is already good. Yet we--meaning myself and two recent college grads--did it one better. Why watch on TV when it is possible to see something in person?

In mid-August, an editor at THE SPORTING NEWS called three college kids who never had met and essentially proposed the following: Take every plan you've made from September until New Year's and scrap it. Say good-bye to your family and friends. Live out of a suitcase for four months. Oh yeah, and get back to us in a day with your final decision.