multiple movie screens effect

Moderators, feel free to move this if you feel it is in the wrong section.

I am working on a fairly complex animation involving a football which - as it flies - turns into a ball of screens all showing different footage. The more screens, the better. It has to be textured on the outside like a real football, and when it comes apart, imagine each screen flips out, like a transformer, so that the football textured side is now inside the ball, and the movie screen side is on the outside.

I want to ask: what does anyone think might be the best set up for this? I am painstakingly parenting and constraining faces to an empty so that they rotate out, but I want to work with hundreds of screens. Would there be some sort of particle set up which might help?

I can post a quick storyboard, if it helps.

Thanks for your time.

do you actually need to see the screens flip out? because you could just render 1 animation tht looks like the football and another that had all the screens and then do a fade transition between the 2. but it would be awsomely cool if you could see the screens flip:D