Super Bowl Sunday might be the darling of live television events, but Chris Rogers and Jim Hawley get paid to confront the realities that defy its good-time vibe.

Rogers is risk-control director for Chicago-based Aon Corp.’s national entertainment group, which counsels arenas, stadiums and other public venues on how they can improve safety at their events and in the process avoid disasters or getting sued.

Hawley is an executive risk services consultant at Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co., which claims to be the leading insurer of pizza places that deliver their pies. Nationally, Fireman’s clients include Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Papa John’s, and, in Illinois, Monical’s, Aurelio’s, Chicago’s Pizza & Pasta, and Chicago Pizza Authority. Papa John’s expects to sell a million pizzas when the Pittsburgh Steelers meet the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, making it the chain’s biggest day of the year.

In separate interviews Wednesday, Rogers and Hawley discussed what they see as the chief risks that must be minimized for organizations and businesses both involved in the Super Bowl and serving the consumers watching it on television.

“When it comes to the pizza industry, the biggest exposure is the delivery person,” Hawley said.

Fireman’s averages 3 pizza-related claims on Super Bowl Sunday, vs. 2.74 on other days, a 9 percent increase.

But the average claim on Super Bowl Sunday is $14,799. That’s 19 percent higher than the typical day.

Hawley said pizza-delivery accidents are most frequently caused by following too closely and rear-ending the vehicle ahead.

“The second-largest one, which we’ve just started to see in the past two years, is left turns through intersections,” he said, noting that he’s encouraging pizza-company managers, when planning routes, to avoid left turns. “We’re not sure what has caused that to peak a bit.”

Fireman’s is also encouraging pizza managers to avoid calling their drivers on their cell phones, and, if they must, ask the dispatcher to ring the driver twice within a minute. That way, the driver knows to pull over and take the call.

Also, Fireman’s is pushing its pizza clients to start taping directions to a destination to the dashboard, not the pizza box. That way, their eyes dart from the road less often. Similarly, it urges pizza management to make sure the pizzas are secured in the cars so they don’t slide off the seat, causing the driver to become distracted.

Due to a poor economy, pizza makers are hiring more drivers in their 40s and 50s. While teen drivers have a bad reputation, Hawley believes that they’re more cut out for pizza delivery work, including having a faster reaction time.

Rogers isn’t advising the National Football League or the Dallas stadium hosting the game, but Aon is the broker for the Packers and has also provided many services to Super Bowl sponsors.

The security challenges of the game are daunting, Rogers said.

For one thing, the championship game is being held in a new stadium, with a staff that’s likely still getting familiar with the venue.

“That’s the biggest issue I’d see at this point,” Rogers said.

But hardly the only one. The weather in Dallas is expected to be colder-than-normal so attendees will be more bundled up, making the security staff’s job of searching for weapons more difficult. The parking lots could also be icy, raising the likelihood of slips and falls.

Then there’s the volatile situation in the Middle East. What if something catastrophic happened, and the Super Bowl had to be interrupted for live news coverage? Fox, which pays handsomely for the rights to the event, likely has an event cancellation policy on the remote chance that the game were to be cancelled.

For the first time ever, many jurisdictions are now required to have one trained crowd-control manager for every 250 people in attendance at an event.

“That requires quite a number of people,” Rogers said.