Traveling no easy task for UT

As Tennessee’s football team took the practice field on Monday, UT assistant equipment manager Max Parrott packed belts into a travel case.

Those belts — and some 13,000 pounds of equipment — begin their nearly 2,500-mile journey to Berkeley, Calif., this afternoon in advance of No. 15 Tennessee’s season-opener at 12th-ranked Cal on Saturday (TV: WATE, 8 p.m. EDT).

Two drivers, Charlie Harris and Butch Caldwell of BP Express, will take turns driving UT’s 18-wheeler cross-country beginning at noon. They’re scheduled to arrive sometime Thursday evening.

Yet, for UT equipment manager Roger Frazier, the only difference between packing up for this week and any other game is the distance that equipment will travel.

“Moving is moving, whether you’re moving across the street or across the country,” Frazier says.

Even for a UT home game, Frazier and his staff, which includes 17 student assistants, will pack up and move everything from the team’s locker room in the Neyland-Thompson Sports Center down to Neyland Stadium and back again following the game.

“We move every week,” Frazier said. “Most schools dress in the same locker room for games and practice. We’re kind of unique that we have a practice locker room and a game locker room. Only difference is if we’re going up here (to Neyland) and forget something it’s easy to pick up the phone and call.”

Frazier’s packing philosophy is simple enough: Better to have something and not need it, than need it and not have it, he says.

To that end, Frazier and the equipment staff will take anywhere from 25 to 28 heavy-duty trunks full of almost everything a football team could possibly need.

Despite a forecast that doesn’t include bad weather, they’ll pack an extra game jersey and pair of pants for each of the 75-80 players making the trip and rain gear for the coaches.

Large fans for the sidelines, three trunks of gear for the coaching staff, instruments for UT’s pep band, training room supplies and even a few items for an alumni cookout are loaded and ready to go. Only players’ helmets and pads — which they’ll need for practice on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday — will travel on the team plane.

“It’s quite an undertaking,” says Frazier. “We’re basically the roadies for the rock stars.”

Making sure things go smoothly this week has been a priority for Bruce Warwick since he arrived on campus in March as Tennessee’s new assistant athletics director for football operations.

Warwick, who oversaw travel arrangements for the Green Bay Packers among other duties during his nearly six-year tenure there as director of football administration, says planning for college trips presents a different set of challenges.

“The size of your party is so much bigger in college,” Warwick said. “You have to deal with so many more people. Players, people associated with the program, whether it be band or cheerleaders, you don’t have those issues in the NFL.”

Rarely did those NFL trips include more than 53 players, coaches and staff.

This week, Tennessee will take 75-80 players, a 40-member pep band, as well as coaches and their wives, support staff and cheerleaders. All that adds up to a travel party of more than 200 people.

It’s enough to fill a jumbo jet, which is exactly what the Vols chartered for their trip.

Also flying with the team are 10 of Frazier’s student equipment managers, who were selected on the basis of seniority.

They’ll unload the tractor trailer Friday morning and set up the visitor’s locker room in Memorial Stadium — the smallest Frazier’s seen in his 25 years as UT’s equipment manager — in advance of the Vols’ walk-through practice Friday evening.

By then, every item will have been checked off a list before it goes into a trunk. As those cases are loaded onto the tractor-trailer, they’re checked off another master list so that nothing gets left behind.

“Knock on wood,” Frazier said. “I may forget my own toothbrush, but we’ll make sure everyone else has what they need.”

Like most fans, the hours before kickoff are full of butterflies for Frazier. But they’ll end once the ball goes sailing through the air.

“There’s nothing like kicking off the opener,” Frazier says. “When the ball flies, you’ll hear a sigh from me. I’m really nervous up to that point.”

Drew Edwards covers University of Tennessee football. He may be reached at 865-342-6274.