TV producer Bardia Shah-Rais

Football fans are flocking to the NFL this season. TV ratings haven’t been this good in two decades. The NFC championship game drew 57.9 million viewers, the second largest ever for a title game.

Whatever the reasons (the economy, high-definition TVs, appealing teams), Atlanta-based TruTV has to be thrilled about the timing of its new show “NFL Full Contact,” a six-episode behind-the-scenes look at how the football league operates off the gridiron. It debuts Monday at 10 p.m., riding off the Super Bowl the night before.

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TruTV changed gears two years ago by dropping its Court TV moniker and reducing its focus on crime. Instead, it’s been building its young male viewership with shows such as “Operation Repo,” “Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura” and “Las Vegas Jail House.”

“Full Contact,” which will include looks at the Pro Bowl, the Super Bowl and Draft Day, fits right in, though it isn’t nearly as edgy as most of its counterparts.

Cameras follow several employees such as a TV producer, a security guy, a concert organizer and ironically, a cameraman. In some ways, this is like a corporatized version of TruTV’s recent hit “Full Throttle Saloon,” a huge biker bar that operates for two weeks a year in South Dakota.

That show featured carousing, babes in short shorts and a nervous bar owner fretting about his livelihood as hail pelted his operation and bartenders stole money from him.

Sam Choi, concert manager Dan Parise and events VP Frank Supovitz confer over getting Tim McGraw footballs to throw into the crowd.

In the first episode of “Full Contact,” the problems are far less traumatic. And given that this has the NFL stamp of approval, it’s significantly tamer.

Last September in Pittsburgh, the NFL held a concert starring country star Tim McGraw and pop act the Black Eyed Peas before seguing to the kickoff game. Challenges included crowd flow, sound problems, a missing (and quickly found) child and an overzealous security guard giving former NFL star Rod Woodson a hard time for not having proper ID. One of the more amusing moments: concert manager Dan Parise boots out a McGraw impersonator, worried he might cause confusion.

To drum up drama, the “Full Contact” producers use a technique any “24″ fan might recognize: at the beginning and end of each commercial break, they split the screen to show four things going on at the same time, ominous music in the background.

Frank Supovitz, NFL vice president for special events, said his only worry at first was whether his staff would act differently in the presence of cameras. “What I found quickly,” he said,” was that I have professionals focused on getting their jobs done. The cameras didn’t matter.”

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