Bowl preparation extends beyond the field
December 22, 2009 | Football
Dec. 22, 2009
MADISON, Wis. -- The Wisconsin football team departs for the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, Fla., tomorrow afternoon, but the staging and planning for the event began much longer ago.
According to Brad Pendergrass, who is in his first year as director of football operations at Wisconsin, planning began long before the team even knew which bowl game it would be playing in. A committee comprised of 8-10 athletic department staff members was formed and the first meeting was held back on Nov. 5.
"[Associate AD For Capital Projects & Sports Administration] John Chadima and [Associate AD for Business Operations] John Jentz led the group, and their knowledge and experience has been invaluable," Pendergrass said. "Luckily, with the great tradition of going to bowls that we have here at Wisconsin, the process is pretty streamlined."
Jentz said it would be nearly impossible to do things without getting a committee together.
"Successful bowl preparation requires a strong committee, as there are far too many details and not nearly enough time for one person to do so," he said.
Pendergrass' duties deal mostly with the team, coaches and football staff with regard to the team's itinerary. He also serves as the primary contact with Delta, the team's charter airline carrier, the hotel reservations group and its catering staff, the bus companies and other entities that the travel party will encounter during the team's time in Orlando.
While the team has already had five road games this year, planning for a bowl game is a little more complicated than a trip to Bloomington, Ind., might be.
"It's similar in a lot of respects to a regular season trip in that the intricate details are what make it a success, but it is different because of the number of days we are there (seven), and the much larger group of people who travel to the bowl as part of our official party, instead of the more concentrated group that goes on regular season trips," Pendergrass said. "In addition, because of the magnitude of the entire trip, there are more people involved in the facilitation of the trip, which is a welcomed thing for [football operations coordinator] Mark Taurisani and myself."
While the team is returning to the same hotel as last year's bowl trip and working with Florida Citrus Sports for the fourth time in five years, Jentz says that moving a large quantity of people is always a complex task.
"It seems as though each year something unexpected happens," he said. "One year we realized upon arrival that all of the footballs were left behind in Madison. Another year we found out that two smaller planes that can accommodate the same number of band members, at a much lower cost, cannot accommodate the same amount of freight (instruments) and had to scramble to fix that problem."
Luckily Jentz says that this year there have been no surprises yet.
On a regular season road game, the team is allowed to bring only 70 players, per Big Ten rules. For a bowl game however, the entire roster is allowed to travel, which for Wisconsin means more than 100 players will be making the trip. Factoring in the team, coaches, staff, administration, the band, the spirit squad and guests, the entire traveling party is estimated to be about 700 people.
Pendergrass has planned bowl trips in previous stints at Mississippi State and his alma mater, Tennessee, but input from staff members who were with the team at last year's Champs Sports Bowl have helped with this year's planning.
"Mark Taurisani and [football equipment manager] Mark Peeler have done an outstanding job getting me up to speed on the positives and negatives of last year's trip, and how we can improve it this year," Pendergrass said.
Taurisani and Peeler are actually also part of an advance crew that left Monday morning to begin setup for when the team arrives on Wednesday.
The Badgers ended the regular season with a game at Hawaii. It served as a mini-bowl trip, but it also led to the shortest turnaround in recent history between the final regular season game and the bowl game.
Terry Calloway, assistant equipment manager, said the preparation for the bowl game began right after the team got back from Hawaii.
"I started to unpack some of our trunks that we had used in Hawaii and started repacking in the normal trunks that we use for regular road trips," he said. "Since we are practicing in Orlando and taking the whole team, we have to pack a lot more stuff that we don't take on a normal trip."
Due to the short turnaround time and the fact that the team is still practicing before heading to Orlando, Calloway said that the student managers have been a big help in the team's preparation.
"The student managers had to figure out what we could send early on the truck and what we would have to take on the plane with us, like footballs and practice dummies," Calloway said.
That equipment truck left Madison Saturday night with equipment and supplies, in addition to excess luggage from members of the traveling party. To read more about that, check out Brian Lucas' blog entry, "On the Road Again."
There's a lot that goes on behind-the-scenes in order to make the bowl game as smooth of an operation as possible. Preparation began over a month ago, and now, things are finally being put in motion.
