The biggest pro football game of the year, Super Bowl 2013 was almost overshadowed by a power outage in the second half, halting play and leaving millions scratching their heads in the dark.
The blackout left the game in limbo for more than 30-minutes, essentially giving both teams an unplanned second halftime, with various parts of the Superdome shrouded in darkness, but clueless as to why.
The Baltimore Ravens were leading the San Francisco 49ers 28-6 before most of the lights in the 73,000-seat stadium went out with 13:22 left in the third quarter Sunday night.
When the lights went out, CBS News correspondent Armen Keteyian was in the NFL control room interviewing the league's Senior Vice President, Frank supovitz, who is in charge of the NFL's Super Bowl Game Day operation. No one panicked, but there was definite confusion in the room, said Keteyian.
Calling the game for CBS Sports, Jim Nantz revealed they lost communication on the field entirely. "We were out, we were completely dark," Nantz told CBS News. "I couldn't see chart boards or anything. I wasn't even sure if they'd be able to restart the game."
After 34-minutes of intermittent darkness, the lights turned back on, and so did the 49ers. When the game got back underway, San Francisco looked like a totally new team. Seeming to have shaken off its first-half nerves, the 49ers offense finally played like everyone expected them to, rallying back from a 22-point deficit in a tight 34-31 loss to the Ravens.
Officials revealed about two hours following the game that an "abnormality" in the power system caused the mid-game blackout when it triggered an automatic shutdown, forcing backup systems to start up. However, what caused the initial problem remains unclear, they said.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu worked damage control following the game, calling the power outage "an unfortunate moment in what has been an otherwise shining Super Bowl week for the city of New Orleans."
"In the coming days, I expect a full after-action report from all parties involved," he said.
Auxiliary power kept the field from plunging into total darkness, but escalators froze, credit card machines shut down, and concourses were only light by small banks of lights tied to emergency service around the building, CBS reported.
A statement from Entergy New Orleans, the company that provides power to the stadium, and Superdome operator SMG illuminated the chain of events. The problem apparently started at the spot where Entergy feeds power into the stadium's lines, the companies announced, and occurred shortly after Beyonce spectacle-filled halftime show, which featured extravagant lighting and video effects.
"A piece of equipment that is designed to monitor electrical load sensed an abnormality in the system," the statement said. "Once the issue was detected, the sensing equipment operated as designed and opened a breaker, causing power to be partially cut to the Superdome in order to isolate the issue. ... Entergy and SMG will continue to investigate the root cause of the abnormality."
For their part, the players seem to mostly be dismissing the blackout as a mere footnote from the night.
"It just took us longer to lose," lamented San Francisco linebacker Ahmad Brooks.
"It really hurt us. We had lot of momentum," fullback Vonta Leach said. "We were rolling. That 35- or 40-minute wait, whatever it was, hurt our momentum as far as what we were trying to do. But we came out on top and that's all that matters."