CHICAGO — It's early Monday morning, a little more than 10 hours until "Monday Night Football" will be broadcast on ESPN to more than 17 million viewers. Outside it's a quiet, cool, overcast fall day with the sun just starting to burn through the clouds, but inside the Buckingham Room on the 11th floor of the Ritz Carlton, the action is already hot and heavy.

This is where the MNF heavyweights are holding their final production meeting to go over everything they have discussed and put together during the previous week for that night's broadcast of the Bears-Packers game at Soldier Field.

The graphics people are showing the group everything they have worked on. The statistics folks are double-checking the numbers and discussing the ones that are most pertinent. The people in charge of the cameras go over the list of key names — Rodgers, Cutler, Urlacher, Matthews — that they need to focus their shots on that night. The talent, namely lead analysts Jon Gruden and Ron Jaworski, are waxing football gospel, highlighting strategy and personnel and what they have gleaned from a week's worth of film study. Play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico, the main voice for the evening, is taking notes and chiming in. And the show's producers and director oversee everything, aware of what each of the 200-plus sets of hands will be involved in for the show, from start to finish.

"It's intense, man, intense," says Jay Rothman, MNF's senior coordinating producer. "The man-hours … it's insanity. If you combine it all, all the people who work on this show, it's sick. It really is."