Super Bowl, Winter Olympics, soccer World Cup take extra security measures

NFL, security is an ongoing issue throughout the season. ABC News reports that Ahlerich told AP that five to ten bomb threats are phoned in during each regular season — roughly one every other week — but they amount to nothing. Still, he called “improvised explosive devices” — a car bomb or pipe bomb, for example — the biggest concern as thousands of people from dozens of federal agencies, including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, local police and two private security firms prepare for the Super Bowl. Other primary concerns, he said, include “the active shooter scenario, the chemical agent or biological agent scenario.”

Coast Guard Rear Admiral Steven Branham, the federal coordinator for Super Bowl security, said Sun Life Stadium and environs will be screened for bombs and other threats well before anyone is allowed inside.

According to a federal security assessment prepared for last year’s Super Bowl, the al-Qaeda training manual lists “blasting and destroying the places of amusement, immorality, and sin” as one of the terrorist group’s missions. That assessment also says a jihadist message board carried a posting in 2006 with information about how to conduct an attack on a sporting event using more than one suicide bomber, inside the venue and near exits.

Fans are not allowed to bring large bags into the Super Bowl stadium, and 100 magnetometers — like those you step through at an airport — will be used to detect metal objects. There are also radiological, biological, and chemical weapon detection and protection devices. Ahlerich noted, though, that plastic explosives attached to someone’s body would elude a metal detector, which is why nearly everyone entering the stadium is subjected to a pat-down search. “Exceptions would be a police officer in uniform and a player in uniform, but they’re going to be rigorously screened as well when they come in,” Ahlerich said. He paused, then added another exception: “We’re not going to pat down the president of the United States.”

Used to be, long before the 9/11 terror attacks, that screening was not nearly so rigorous at the Super Bowl. It wasn’t even all that tough to get in without a ticket, or so says Dion Rich, subject of the book, Confessions of the World’s Greatest Gate-Crasher. The 80-year-old Rich delights in regaling listeners with tales of walking right into Super Bowls, Olympics, the World Series, the Kentucky Derby, the