If you ever see Steve Boyd on television, something has gone really wrong.

Boyd, AS ’88, has guided backstage goings-on at the Academy Awards, the Olympics, the 2000 Democratic National Convention and the Super Bowl half-time shows.

When the rest of the world was hunting for pretzels during the commercial breaks on Oscar night, a tuxedoed Boyd was working the aisles of the Kodak Theatre, wearing headphones and carrying a clipboard. His job: Make sure stars like Jodie Foster and Nicole Kidman don’t go to the ladies’ room when their award is next up. His pay: An Oscar baseball cap.

When television viewers were watching film clips at the Oscars, Boyd was watching Oprah reach over to Jamie Foxx and admonish him to spit out his gum before his award was announced.

What’s it like lining up Oscar contenders so the camera can find them for those cutaway shots of the winners and losers?

“During the commercial breaks, all hell breaks loose in very close quarters,” Boyd says. “You’re mashed together with movie stars, directors and producers who are all household names. Everyone is greeting, congratulating and making plans for after-parties. It’s like being on a subway car at rush hour, but everyone is wearing a gown or tuxedo.’’

The freelance art designer has followed his muse and his instincts to seven Olympics, the Cricket World Cup in South Africa and a 2,000-person masquerade ball at a carnival in Trinidad.

He landed a job as an assistant designer at Self magazine right out of college but after three months of interviews gone sour, swiftly maneuvered his way through Condé Nast’s magazine family, including the prestigious New Yorker.

He was a corporate art director by 1999, but his day job wasn’t his dream job.

Even at UD, when professors talked to undergraduate Boyd about what he wanted after graduation, his answer was pinpoint-specific: Be a graphic designer for an Olympics.

“My whole family is jocks. My dad [Mike, AG ’62] was a scholarship football player. My mom [Jane, CHS ’60] was the only female phys. ed. major her whole four years of college. I grew up in a town where not much happened, so, when the Olympics came on, I was in heaven. When the 1984 Olympics in L.A. was televised, the venue designs were really exuberant and over-the-top garish. I thought, ‘Oh, that’s my way in.’ The Games ended the day before I started at Delaware.” He opted to major in visual communications.

Boyd says his Delaware professors and his magazine bosses in Manhattan helped him move toward his dream. “It was just people understanding that I was someone with a desire to do something really specific. A lot of people just cut me a break for being young, dumb and excited,’’ Boyd says.

He worked several jobs at once and made connections all over New York City. He worked weekends for free for an art director who led him on about a job at the 1992 Olympics, but Boyd says the guy blew town for Barcelona without him. Fortunately, a chance meeting with an old acquaintance on a Manhattan street just before the Games began led to a radio job at the Olympics.

That first gig was a perfect low-pressure entrée to his dream, and it came with ringside seats to every Olympic event. Boyd was hooked.

He went on to Lillehammer in 1994, Nagano in 1998, Atlanta in 1996, Sydney in 2000 and Salt Lake City in 2002.

And, last year, in Athens, he literally ran part of the show. As a coordinating producer, Boyd made sure the presentation of the presidential speeches had proper pomp, athletes paraded without a hitch and the torchbearers made it to the cauldron without a glitch.

He worked almost nonstop, but he was surrounded by others who were doing the same. Mundane life tasks like cooking, cleaning and shuffling through the mail disappeared. “Everyone gets sleep-deprived and lonesome at the same pace, so you don’t notice it,’’ he says. “Athens was 15 months away from home. Your normal life drops away as you go.’’

Home for him now is a small condo he bought near West Hollywood, one he estimates cost about what a mansion would in his hometown of Hagerstown, Md.

Work today could be costuming 5,000 people in a jungle workshop in Trinidad, choreographing the talent on the field of play during the Super Bowl or designing lanterns for an Olympic ceremony.

TV audiences saw a burst of color when the spectator seats at the Salt Lake City Olympics seemed to swell into flame during the opening ceremonies. They didn’t see Boyd, who organized the 57,000 flame cards that had to be in exactly the right seats for the stunt to succeed.

“The fascinating thing about this line of business is that you work with masses of volunteer cast members who have never done anything even remotely like this in their lives,’’ Boyd says. “You rehearse for months to secretly prepare a show or segment that lasts only minutes. But, in those few minutes, your contribution is seen by literally billions of viewers. You and your performers have one chance to get it right—or wrong.’’

When the world saw Olympic skaters walk effortlessly into Salt Lake City’s opening ceremonies toting poles topped with windsock flags, it was Boyd’s planning that made it look effortless. He designed the carbon-fiber poles that stood up to wind drag but were feather-light, and he fashioned the windsocks that topped them to have extra horizontal loft to assure the city name would be legible on both sides of the flag.

If there’s a televised event that’s big enough to be discussed around the water cooler on Monday morning, there’s a fair chance Boyd had a part in it. When Paul McCartney sang “Hey Jude’’ at Super Bowl XXXIX, and 70,000 audience members put down their beers to hold up placards spelling out “Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,” Boyd was in the background. He designed the stunt and directed the 300 volunteers who spent five days placing placards in 70,000 stadium seats.

Next up for Boyd is web design. Boyd’s own site at [www.steveboydportfolio.com] has spurred others to ask him to design their web sites.