NFL's most unprecedented Super Bowl incident caused fears of terrorist attack
Super Bowl fans were left trapped in lifts and unable to buy food with their credit cards as fears of an act of terrorism spread when an unprecedented blackout occurred during the biggest game in the world 10 years ago.
Super Bowl 47 between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers was halted for over half an hour as the entire stadium plunged into darkness. A technical error inside the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans caused half the electricity to turn off - including coaches radios, television cameras and microphones, and half the floodlights.
Fans were left stuck inside elevators on the west side of the stadium, and credit card machines at concession stands were turned off. Speculation immediately began swirling about what had caused the blackout, as officials scrambled behind-the-scenes to get the lights back on.
The blackout occurred minutes after the half-time show performance by Beyonce, and an early theory was that the power generated for the performance had caused an overload, leading to the blackout.
That theory was quickly squashed, however, and a more sinister one came to light. 60 Minutes host Armen Keteyian explained to Sports Illustrated: "The first thing that came to mind was the T-word," with the "T-word" being terrorism.
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It didn't take long for police to dispel that suggestion, however, and very quickly the problem had been put down to an issue with one of the two power feeds inside the stadium.
Players from both teams were left on the field in stunned silence as half the lights in the arena went outTerrorism and Beyonce's performance weren't the only theories put out there about the blackout, as Ravens star Ray Lewis later suggested he believed NFL officials had intentionally caused the blackout.
He alleged - without any evidence - that someone at the NFL had pulled the plug to prevent the Ravens from blowing the 49ers out and making the game an uncompetitive landslide.
He said: "I'm not gonna accuse nobody of nothing - because I don't know facts, but you're a zillion-dollar company, and your lights go out? No. (Laughs) No way.
Fans on the west side of the stadium were left in darkness due to the power outage"Now listen, if you grew up like I grew up - and you grew up in a household like I grew up - then sometimes your lights might go out, because times get hard. I understand that.
"But you cannot tell me somebody wasn't sitting there and when they say, 'The Ravens (are) about to blow them out. Man, we better do something.' ... That's a huge shift in any game, in all seriousness. And as you see how huge it was because it let them right back in the game."
The 49ers nearly erased the Ravens' 28-6 lead after the blackout, only to come up short on the final drive. The Ravens closed the game out 34-31 to send Lewis into retirement with a second Super Bowl championship ring.
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