Amazing before and after pictures of the Metrodome

Yahoo! Sports

Mon Dec 13 11:16am EST

Amazing before and after pictures of the Metrodome

You've seen the breathtaking video of the Metrodome's collapse, now take a look at some before and after pictures of the Minnesota Vikings stadium.

Here is the dome in bubblier times (2009):

And on Sunday:

That looks like a deflated soufflé. City officials are hopeful that the roof can be repaired by next Monday, when the Vikings are scheduled to host the Chicago Bears. That sounds remarkably optimistic, no?

I don't know ~~much~~ anything about inflatable roof repair, but six days doesn't seem like much time to clear off the snow, get new materials, patch the roof, inflate the dome, get everything reattached to the top of the dome and pass safety inspections (not to mention all the clean-up that has to be done and going through all the usual game preparations). It could happen, but I'd call it unlikely.

Seeing as how next week is the Vikings last home game, why rush it? Move the game elsewhere (the University of Minnesota is a leading candidate to host) and repair the roof with precision, not speed.

[Rewind: Power outage strikes stadium during NFL game]

Because you can't watch this amazing video enough, here's the FOX clip of the collapse:

Michael Hiestand has an interesting story in Monday's USA Today about how FOX captured the collapse on video. He writes:

Before leaving its routine NFL game setup at Minneapolis' Metrodome Saturday, the Fox crew did something different: It left a camera on to continuously shoot the roof.
"It was already leaking," NFL lead game producer Richie Zyontz said Sunday. "But we heard that's happened here before. They were heating up the dome to furnace levels to melt the snow."
But Zyontz said Fox videotape operator Randy Carr heard from a Metrodome staffer "this was a real problem." With a camera and mikes left on overnight, Zyontz says, "We knew what we were looking for. This was specifically for that roof collapsing."

One man's disaster is another man's triumph. This FOX crew had the foresight to put a camera on a leaky roof and it paid off with some of the best video you'll ever see.