Bubba Cam gives fans look inside huddle of XFL games

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LAS VEGAS - Late yesterday afternoon, the great secret of the XFL sat out in the open behind the end zone at Sam Boyd Stadium for all the world to see.

It didn't appear to be much - a metal rod, affixed with all kinds of oblong attachments that made the whole thing look more like a space probe to Mars than the device that is going to change the way we watch football games.

But this is what those affiliated with the XFL have been careful not to reveal, hinting at its presence but refusing to confirm its existence or disclose its purpose.

Internally, they call it the Bubba Cam.

And they do not want you to know they have it until 5 p.m. today, when it will be unveiled in a hail of fireworks at the XFL's first official game.

The Bubba Cam is a small camera mounted on a pole that will be carried by a man who lines up on the field right behind the players. The cameraperson will be dressed in black and will wear a hockey goalie's mask, shoulder pads and football cleats. The cameraperson will take a spot behind the running back on offense or the middle linebacker on defense. And as the play develops and the players pile into each other, he will be right there, a couple of steps away, trailing the action - looking almost like a 12th player on the field.

"It's really beautiful," says Tom Stewart, a freelance camera operator who will be one of the two Bubba Cam operators in tonight's game in Las Vegas. "The things you don't see on the field or in the huddle you're going to see on the field and in the huddle."

The XFL has gone to great lengths to prevent the world from knowing that it had something like the Bubba Cam. It has paraded sex and lewd, bawdy scenarios across its commercials, teasing potential fans with the empty promise of maybe having a camera in the cheerleaders' dressing room. It has talked of literally putting the fan into the game, but the sport's officials would never be specific when asked how they could possibly let the viewers see the game from the player's eyes.

What they did was essentially invent another player for each side of the ball - the Bubba Cam operator.

Those who have seen it work say the Bubba Cam provides spectacular views of the game. They say you will see the action from the eyes of a player, and perhaps the most remarkable thing is that the Bubba Cam operator also lines up in the offensive and defensive huddles, letting you hear what the players are saying. "This is going to be the best job I've ever had," Stewart says. "I mean, I never even played football before and now I'm going to be in the huddle and on the field with professional football players."

For all of the talk about outrageous announcers and microphones on the players, the real intrigue of the XFL is its camerawork because no other league has been able to put the fan right inside the game. NBC, which will televise the league's games, has brought out an old experimental camera that will run on guidewires and come down to point just a few feet off the ground. It moves with a buzz and is supposed to follow the plays, making viewers feel as if they're floating just inches above the action.

But nobody has ever tried something like the Bubba Cam - actually putting camera operators on the field of play. The idea of doing so has always seemed to violate the integrity of the game, making it more of a show than actual sport.

Still, the players, who have played alongside the camera during a dry run of an XFL telecast, don't seem bothered by the extra bodies. Angel Rubio, a defensive tackle for the Las Vegas Outlaws, laughs as he describes the cameramen "trying to bob and weave through traffic."

"One thing, though," Rubio adds. "They definitely seemed to get tired in the second half."

It is a cumbersome gadget. The cameraperson must wear a harness in addition to shoulder pads to provide a support for the camera. Attached to the harness is a small metal arm, which sticks out about 1-1/2 feet. It is this arm that holds the camera pole.

"It's like trying to run with Arnold Palmer's golf bag or Tiger Woods' golf bag," Stewart says. "I don't want to know how much it weighs because I don't want to be fixated on how heavy it is."

The league carefully screened its Bubba Cam operators, working to be sure they only had camera operators who could keep up with an entire football game. Stewart, who does a lot of work for the WWF running behind the wrestlers chasing them from the ring to the backstage dressing rooms, believes he is in good enough shape to handle a whole game.

Tonight, he will find out as he lugs around the device named after a beloved backstage cameraman in XFL founder Vince McMahon's WWF.

"I'll tell you what," Stewart says. "Whoever invented this thing is amazing. I don't know if it was Vince or someone else but whoever it was, created a great thing."