Playoff brings 11 days and thousands of miles of logistical challenges

NEW ORLEANS — Six weeks ago, when Alabama jumped from No. 5 to No. 1 in the College Football Playoff Top 25 after a win against Mississippi State, it's possible no one was quite as excited as Jeff Springer.

"I probably celebrated more than anybody in Alabama," says the Crimson Tide's head equipment manager — but not, he says, for the reasons you'd think.

"Hey, we're No. 1, that's great," Springer says. "But I knew as long as we stayed there, we were guaranteed to go to New Orleans. We wouldn't go to Pasadena."

That's no knock against the Rose Bowl, but a nod to the new reality. If the advent of the College Football Playoff has altered the sport and amped up the postseason, it has also ramped up the level of logistical difficulty for football programs — especially for the people, like Springer, who are tasked with making the enormous operations function smoothly.

Spending a week at an off-campus bowl site has always been a big undertaking. But when it was over, win or lose, it was over.

Now, for two of the teams, there's another game — which is why Florida State's equipment truck is scheduled to depart from the Rose Bowl no later than two hours after the final gun Thursday evening.

"We'll need them to be back (in Tallahassee)," says Mark Robinson, Florida State's director of football operations. "We'd want to practice on (Saturday), so it's a big time crunch."

Win or lose, the Seminoles' players and coaches will fly back from California on Friday. The 18-wheeler is scheduled to drive straight through: 2,253 miles from one end of the country to the other. Westbound, it took all of two days. But with three rotating professional drivers, the goal is to make back to campus by early Saturday.

If the Seminoles beat Oregon, they'll need much of the equipment on that truck — everything from practice gear to computers, copiers and video equipment — by no later than Saturday, in order to begin preparation for the College Football Playoff championship game, which will be played Jan. 12 in Arlington, Texas.

And although Florida State is the No. 3 seed in a four-team playoff, the Seminoles drew the toughest logistical assignment. That's why Springer made sure earlier this month to call Darin Kerns, his counterpart at Florida State, just to say he felt his pain.

"That's the worst-case scenario for an equipment manager," Springer says, "having that game (the Rose Bowl) and then having to turn around and go back cross-country, especially if you win."

That last part isn't something coaches assume — or will even talk about. But Springer and his colleagues at Florida State, Ohio State and Oregon can't afford to take it one game at a time.

"It's like playing for the Rose Bowl and almost like planning for the Cotton Bowl at the same time," Robinson says. "When you play on the 1st, you're back in town on the 2nd, and you'd leave again (for Dallas, site of the championship game) on the 9th, it's just such a quick turnaround."

And with the new postseason format, it's filled with uncertainty. Springer, for example, does not know what Alabama's practice schedule will be if the Tide wins the Sugar Bowl.

"If it has been decided, it hasn't been communicated," he says.

But his job is to plan ahead. This year, it's gotten a little more difficult.

"There are a lot of unknown challenges," Springer says. "This being the first time any of us has ever done it, we're all trying to plan ahead for something that no one has ever done before."

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Bowl trips involve much more than practices, field trips to local attractions and the game. While players and coaches prepare for the game, they're typically accompanied by dozens of support staff members — equipment managers, athletic trainers, recruiting analysts, receptionists, business operations people.

"When you go on the road for a regular game," says Jeff Hawkins, Oregon's senior associate athletic director for football operations, "you really only need three big rooms. When you go on a bowl trip, you need every position room. We bring everything."

Hawkins compares it to moving troops — while stressing he's not comparing college football to war — saying, "The scheduling, the logistics, the supplies — you can't outrun your supplies."

Possibly no one brings more than Alabama, which has 127 players at the Sugar Bowl. And most of the daily operations of the Alabama athletic department — at least as it pertains to the football program — have also been relocated to the Hilton Riverside.

Convention space at the hotel has been converted into meeting rooms and temporary office space. While the players and coaches prepare for Ohio State, the remainder of the operation is conducting the typical daily business.

All of that is standard operating procedure for football teams at major bowl games. What's new is what might come next.

In the past postseason format, teams won or lost, and they exhaled — if they won, the entire organization might party deep into the night — and the next day they'd pack up and go home. The football season was over; it wasn't imperative to get all the football-related equipment back to campus.

But win or lose Thursday night, Alabama's equipment managers, athletic trainers and other support staff will take a charter bus home as soon as possible. They'll make the nearly 300-mile trip back to Tuscaloosa, Ala., overnight. If the Crimson Tide wins the Sugar Bowl, they'll be in place Friday to crank up preparations for the championship game.

The bus will be accompanied by a 53-foot 18-wheeler, two 26-foot box trucks and two luggage trucks. Contained in the convoy: everything from a portable x-ray machine to the team's weight system to copy machines and computers — virtually everything needed to conduct typical operations while on the road.

Yeah, Alabama travels heavy. Or at least, heavier than the Tide would have if its destination had been the Rose Bowl.

In that case, Springer says the Crimson Tide might have shipped some things by air, in order to get them back in time to prepare for the championship game. And Martin Jarmond, Ohio State's executive associate athletic director for administration, says the Buckeyes considered whether they might simply purchase additional equipment — that way, there wouldn't have been as much urgency to race back to Columbus, Ohio.

"We're fortunate that we're not too far away," Jarmond says. "But if we'd been out at the Rose Bowl, that would have been a challenge that we'd have had to figure out."

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Springer discussed logistics with College Football Playoff officials last January. A month later, during a convention in Orlando, he huddled briefly with Florida State's Kerns and Oregon equipment manager Kenny Farr. In April, during a visit to Nike's headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., he made a side trip to Eugene, where he and Oregon equipment manager Kenny Farr continued the conversation.

"We all knew we would have a shot to be in (the Playoff)," Springer says, "so we were trying to work through all of the (potential) issues. … It's funny that we all did make it."

And now they're all facing the same new set of issues — including, for example, a new set of uniforms. Each team got new duds from Nike for the semifinals. The winners will get another set for the championship game; Alabama's Sugar Bowl jerseys, for example, wouldn't be reused because of the Sugar Bowl patches, which are sewn and glued on.

If Alabama wins Thursday, Springer hopes to take delivery of the new uniforms by Tuesday. Then, he'll be tasked with making sure the championship game patches are attached. The rush order would have to be finished before the team departed for Texas on Friday, Jan. 9.

It could be a tighter squeeze in the future. This year, there's an 11-day window between the semifinals and the championship game. Some years, the window will be only seven days.

Although the teams will spend only four nights in Texas, they'll still likely go through one full practice there, on Saturday, Jan. 10 — a "Thursday" practice in coaches' game week schedules — and then a walk-through the next day.

"It's a quick turnaround," Springer says, "and then doing the exact same thing one week later."

SCENES FROM THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF PRACTICES