In College, Travel Is Bi-Coastal Bias

LOS ANGELES -- It's understandable if the Georgia Bulldogs are licking their lips getting ready for Saturday's game against undefeated Arizona State.

And why not? Georgia, which has an all-time record of 363-115-15 in games played in Athens, loves to beat up on nonconference opponents during the regular season, especially under coach Mark Richt, who sports an impressive 23-1 home record against non-SEC teams.

To make Arizona State's challenge even more difficult will be the trip itself, which has always been a problem for Pac-10 teams playing road games on the East Coast.

Most Pac-10 coaches try to get to their teams acclimated to the East Coast time zone by leaving on Thursdays for a Saturday game. But there's a lot more to it than just getting players to an unfamiliar opponent's home early for Pac-10 teams.

"I don't know that you can tell anybody about an experience like this," Arizona State coach Dennis Erickson said prior to the Sun Devils' trip to Georgia this week. "Playing in the Southeastern Conference is going to be a tremendous experience for us; the fan base and the respect that football has [in Georgia]. You talk to our players about it and they're excited to go down there and experience [that]. It's going to be fun; they're looking forward to it. You can't tell anything about some of the places that I've been fortunate to go in my coaching career. Until you go in there and experience it you just don't know."

From figuring out practice locations and workout times; to traveling from the team hotel to the stadium on game day; to the players' eating and bathroom routines, everything is a major adjustment for Pac-10 teams when they play East Coast road games.

Over the years, some Pac-10 coaches have lost games because they spent too much time dealing with adjustments, while others have had their teams primed to play. It's really like rolling the dice.

Stanford Coach Jim Harbaugh definitely learned from his early season experience when he micro-managed his team for a game at Wake Forest Sept. 12.

After defeating Washington State on the road to start the season, Harbaugh drastically switched things up to get Stanford ready to play the Demon Deacons, which reportedly had moved the start of the game to noon EST in order to have it televised.

A kickoff change that did not go over well with the Stanford coach.

"Seems like that's the new trend in college football," Harbaugh said prior to playing Wake Forest. "If you're playing a team from the opposite coast, let's see if we can screw them on the time of kickoff. ... If it's a West Coast team playing on the East Coast, you play as early as possible and if it's an East Coast team playing on the West Coast, you play as late as possible."

To get his team ready, Harbaugh had his players practice early throughout the week and woke them up at 4:30AM for a Thursday morning flight to North Carolina. Once on the plane, Harbaugh took it to a different level when he tried to make sure that his players did not sleep on the trip to help with their adjustment to the East Coast.

"We got up early all week," Stanford wide receiver Ryan Wheeler said about Stanford's preparation for a 9AM PT kickoff. "We got up and practiced and did things just to be ready."

Once the game began, Stanford seemed to handle the early start time well, taking a 17-3 lead at halftime. But in the second half, the Cardinal struggled and Wake Forest rallied to a 24-17 victory.

Although Harbaugh and his players accepted responsibility for the defeat, it was obvious that Stanford was not on top of its game when it needed to be.

After the game, Harbaugh was short with his words when asked about the Pac-10's problems playing road games against East Coast opponents.

"No," Harbaugh said. "I have no explanation for it."

Flashback to September 1982 and the true groundwork for today's highly-successful Florida football program was just being put into place. After years of being overlooked, the Gators were gaining a reputation as an up-and-coming program under then-coach Charlie Pell and they were looking to make a leap into the national picture.

To help with this process, Florida found a way to schedule a two-year home-and-away series against the University of Southern California, starting with an early season matchup in 1982.

USC, which had won a national championship in 1978 and finished ranked No. 2 in 1979, entered with a lofty national ranking but was playing its first game of the season while Florida was coming off a close victory over Miami. I was a true freshman wide receiver/kick returner for the Trojans and I remember how we arrived late Thursday night in Gainesville.

Nothing seemed right from the get-go and the Gators' wild fan support seemed to catch us by surprise. With Florida linebacker Wilbur Marshall dominating the line of scrimmage, we played like a disoriented team at the start of the game, falling behind by two scores in the first half. Although quarterback Sean Salisbury and our defense led a late comeback, Florida won, 17-9, in a game that we should have won.

Except for USC -- thanks to the growing national support the Trojans have gained under Coach Pete Carroll -- it's always rare for Pac-10 teams to get any type of fan support playing games on the East Coast.



The good coaches are able to make this work in their favor by taking an "Us against the World" approach. Carroll has done it for years and so has Oregon State's Mike Riley.

"We like to get in on Thursday and get settled in on Friday before the game," Carroll said prior to the Trojans' game at Ohio State, which they won on Sept. 12th. "It's always a big deal for our young players who have not experienced these types of games before."

This season, UCLA's Rick Neuheisel and California's Jeff Tedford also had success featuring this mentality.

Before California played at Minnesota last week, Tedford was questioned about changing up the Bears' routine for East Coast games. In 2008, Cal left on a Friday to play at Maryland and the sluggish Bears were hammered, falling behind 28-6, before they knew what hit them.

"I still don't believe that was the case last year," Tedford said about the Bears' previous road travel plans before they played at Minnesota. "I don't want to be bull-headed. We've never done this before, but let's give it a chance."
So after going 1-8 in his previous road games, Tedford made a change. He had his team leave on Thursday and the Bears responded with an easy win over the Golden Gophers.

For Neuheisel, the decision to leave a day earlier for the Bruins' game at Tennessee on Sept. 12, was easy when he considered the nearly 20 true freshmen and redshirt freshmen holding roles in the team's two-deep depth chart.

"It's all new to them," Neuheisel said before UCLA played in front of 100,000-plus fans at Tennessee's Neyland Stadium. "How to travel, how to stay in your routine, how to stay in a hotel two nights, there has to be a lot of structure in what we do to keep guys focused between the time we get there and the time we play."

Neuheisel pushed all the right buttons and UCLA held on to a 19-15 victory.

Now it's Erickson's turn to find the best mix for the Sun Devils as they play at Georgia's Sanford Stadium for the first time and experience playing between the hedges.

"We're [asking] right now, 'Where are we at as a football team?'" said Erickson, whose team suffered an ugly defeat at home to Georgia last season. "That's my biggest concern. It will be interesting to find out exactly where we're at when we go down there and play."

One thing for sure, the Sun Devils don't plan to be intimidated, according to defensive back Omar Bolden, who told the Arizona Republic: "It's the SEC, it's 90,000 fans, but if you really look at it, you go to Oregon, it's 58,000, but they're right on your necks. It's really the same thing," Bolden said.

It will be interesting to see if Bolden feels the same way after facing the Bulldogs on Saturday.