Local company plays big role in Super Bowl XLVII

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Super Bowl Sunday is five days away. And as you watch the coverage of Super Bowl weekend, you'll see one Indianapolis company's handiwork everywhere.
     
Since April, Frank Hancock's Indianapolis company Sport Graphics has been busy crafting the visual backgrounds you'll see in New Orleans.

"We're charged again with decorating the stadium both internally and externally and all the NFL hotels.  And things throughout the city the NFL is in control of," says Hancock sitting in his Indianapolis office looking at pictures of the handiwork his company has installed in New Orleans. 

It was Sports Graphics that wrapped the JW Marriott Indianapolis in the Lombardi Trohpy for Super Bowl 46.   There's something similar in New Orleans. 

"JW was a once in a lifetime. I think the thing with the JW is that it stood out, because it was all by itself.  But this one is quite elegant at night time. It's beautiful," he says.

And, remember those roman numerals on the circle that so captivated the crowds in Indy?  The same ones, with the addition of another I, were shipped from Sport Graphics where they've been stored since Indy hosted the Super Bowl,  on trucks to Jeffersonville Indiana.

"Each roman numeral takes it's own flatbed semi. The X takes two because it comes apart," says Hancock.

And then, all the numerals were floated down the Mississippi on a barge to be unveiled in New Orleans Super Bowl weekend.  Thousands are expected to make their way to the barge docked in New Orleans to take a picture in front of the XLVII.  

Designers at Sports Graphics Indianapolis headquarters worked with the NFL to come up with everything from big footballs scattered around New Orleans, to the banners on fences and hotels.    And while the New Orleans decorations are just now being unveiled, Sports Graphics is already working on next year's Super Bowl in New York.         

But New York's Super Bowl is still more than a year away. 

Much sooner than that, Sport Graphics is getting ready for the NCAA Final Four in Atlanta, where their work will again decorate a major sporting event.