Fifty thousand pairs of eyes dart left, right, up and down following the burly, self-professed redneck engulfed by a prodigious black stage setup in the middle of the University of Nebraska’s football stadium. In the center of his camouflaged ball cap is a glaring, blood-red “N.” His face brightens, and in a stereotypical southern accent yells, “GIT-R-DONE!” Nebraska’s sea of red-shirted tailgaters, on a cloudy Fourth of July evening, breaks into cheers for the sleeveless lumberjack shirt and ripped denim-wearing Larry the Cable Guy. And so begins Comedy Central’s special, “Larry the Cable Guy: Tailgate Party.”

Attracting 50,000 people in a stadium two-thirds full is a feat in itself for one man, but this unassuming comedian is no ordinary redneck. His nerves have been numbed after six years of stand-up in arenas that host 14,000 per show. His intelligence and stage performance prowess may surprise both those who call Larry their own and those who deem Larry a racist bigot.

“You always have to adjust your timing. Comedy clubs are different from theaters and theaters are different than arenas,” Larry said. “Once I got into arenas, I learned how to play the crowd like the comedy club.”

Daniel Whitney had dropped the slurring and the Bugs Bunny stammering of Larry’s hard southern accent. Was this the same person?

Larry the Cable Guy and Daniel Whitney, the man behind the stage name, are not one and the same. From here on out, you will be reading about Daniel.

Anyone who has seen one of Whitney’s acts knows he doesn’t hold back when it comes to getting a laugh. Is there the slightest bit of racism at times? It’s obvious, but take a mental note: comedy for Whitney is a routine, a job. Would Russell Peters, Chris Rock and Kat Williams argue otherwise? Don’t tell me you have not laughed during one of their stand-up routines when your roommate or friend flagged you over to watch a clip via YouTube.

“Our job [in comedy] is to make people smile, to make people happy,” Whitney said. “[Comedy] is our job. Seriously, I don’t take what I do that seriously as far as my stage performance. It’s comedy, it’s jokes and that’s all that it should be perceived as.”

“Larry the Cable Guy: Tailgate Party” was $4 per ticket — nearly four times cheaper than terrace seating — and undoubtedly a factor in 50,000+ attendance. But it was a charitable event for both the audience and Whitney’s charity, The Git-R-Done Foundation.

“[The show] was just right about the time when the economy was really taking a tank and when everybody was getting depressed,” Whitney said. “I didn’t really want to make any money on this show so any money that was to be made from this show went to my Git-R-Done Foundation. It was a completely free show.”

With celebrities using charitable organizations as publicity stunts, as Sasha Baron Cohen exposed in “Br?no,” Whitney was less than reticent about his opinions.

“If your heart’s in the right place, I think it’s a good thing. You’re not [supposed] to do it to raise awareness that you’re a nice guy. That’s pathetic.”

Inside Daniel, there is surely a hint of Robert Knepper (“Prison Break”) — the convincing T-Bag, and currently Samuel Sullivan, the newest bad apple in Heroes — whose charitable work is motivated by a desire to separate character from actor and by an honest desire to help. Having made Tom Osborne, University of Nebraska’s football coach, squirm from Larry’s comedy, Daniel knows he has offended more than a few people in this country. But he lives by Bill Cosby’s adage, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

With Comedy Central’s decision to premiere “Larry the Cable Guy: Tailgating Party” on January 31 at 9 p.m. EST, a Billboard award and two Grammy nominations, you can’t say he isn’t successful.

“America is a wonderful country ain’t it?” Whitney quipped.

It might not be too far off before Larry the Cable Guy visits Wisconsin, being that his wife’s childhood home is in northern Wisconsin. And if he swings by, you’ll know what to serve him at a tailgating party. “I go up there and I eat fish sandwiches and eat fried cheese curds and I go home twenty pounds heavier,” Whitney said.