The Arizona Cardinals were closer than ever before. At around 7:48 p.m. MT on Feb. 1, 2009, Larry Fitzgerald sped away from Pittsburgh Steelers defenders to give the Cardinals a 3-point lead in Super Bowl XLIII. The Grand Canyon State rose as he did. The NFL’s most prolific losers were 2:37 away from their first Super Bowl title.

Cardinals fans watching on TV – grandfathers, mothers, fathers, their children – celebrated as Fitzgerald was mobbed by teammates.

And then, amid the euphoria, for a small subset of viewers in Tucson, Arizona, the game froze.

Then it flickered.

Then it cut to a man in a half-unbuttoned shirt, leaning back on a couch; and a woman in a pink tank top, unzipping his pants.

Precisely 13 seconds after what seemed like the greatest moment in Cardinals history, any of Comcast’s 80,000 subscribers watching KVOA’s Super Bowl broadcast in standard definition had their screens overrun by pornography.

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It lasted 30 seconds. It nonetheless brought disturbed complaints and anger. It garnered national headlines. It scarred young eyes and ruined evenings.

It left Comcast employees befuddled – had it been an equipment malfunction? An act of sabotage? For months, it remained a mystery that even FBI special agents struggled to solve.

Not until more than two years later did their investigation bring about an arrest, an eventual guilty plea, and an answer to the question: What, on that dramatic day 10 years ago, went so horrifically wrong?

View photos Moments after Larry Fitzgerald scored a go-ahead touchdown in Super Bowl XLIII, TVs in Tucson flickered and began airing a porn video. (Getty Images) More

How did it happen?

The following morning, Comcast scrambled for an explanation. Harried employees exchanged messages and evidence. A thorough internal investigation yielded no suspects. But the lack of a definitive answer didn’t equate to a dead end.

That’s because Comcast’s Super Bowl feed had come from a neighboring cable company, Cox. The two entities maintained an amicable partnership. Certain channels, including NBC, were transmitted from one company’s Tucson control center to the other’s. The practice was commonplace and necessary.

Over at Cox, in the wake of the fiasco, some employees reasoned that because Cox did not provide the adult entertainment channels (Club Jenna and Shorteez) that interrupted Fitzgerald’s celebration, neither they nor their employer could have been at fault. One of the employees who made that point, according to FBI reports, was a 17-year company veteran named Frank Gonzalez.

But his reasoning could throw investigators off the scent only temporarily.

Gonzalez, a then-36-year-old “family man,” was the most skilled and seemingly reliable of a small team of technicians that manned Cox’s Tucson control center. He was, therefore, the one Comcast called on when it decided to implement more modern broadcast equipment in early 2008. So on multiple occasions, Gonzalez trekked to Comcast’s Tucson command center to help Comcast engineers configure a new server and multimedia router.

When he did, according to FBI interviews, at least one of two things happened. Gonzalez was either given the password required to access Comcast’s new equipment – so that he could help with the configuration. Or, he peered over a Comcast technician’s shoulder and saw a piece of white paper attached to the terminal. On that piece of white paper? Login credentials – which, according to multiple Comcast employees interviewed by the FBI, had not been changed from defaults after the equipment was purchased.

So Gonzalez, presumably, returned to Cox’s hub with two things: A Comcast multimedia router that would be installed in Cox’s control center to allow the transmission of channels from one company to the other; and a password – two things needed to pull off the kind of stunt that would interrupt Super Bowl XLIII.

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