Game Day: On the Road With the Atlanta Falcons
by Harvey ChipkinIt’s Thanksgiving week, and for many that means football as much as it does gathering for a turkey dinner. Spencer Treadwell will be thinking about football this week too.
He’ll be focused on transporting 50 very large men, an even larger support team and 20,000 pounds of equipment to Tampa for a game with the Buccaneers on Sunday, Nov. 25.
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Treadwell is director of logistics and facilities for the Atlanta Falcons. A core part of Treadwell’s job is moving the team’s 50 players, plus coaching staff and guests, to a dozen pre- and regular season road games – plus playoffs if they’re having a good season.
(Making the playoffs is a real possibility for the Falcons this year. The team went undefeated this season until losing to the New Orleans Saints earlier this month.)
Travel Market Report asked Treadwell, a lifelong Falcons fan, to describe what’s involved in arranging travel for the team.
Getting to the game
The team does not have its own plane, so Treadwell partners with Delta, which supplies a 767-300 commercial aircraft. The plane comes off a regular flight, is cleaned and stocked with the team’s catering needs before taking on the Falcons.
Coaches and guests (usually sponsors) sit in first class, staff in business and players in coach. With about 180 people in all – even many large ones – onboard a plane built for 250, “there is plenty of room for the guys,” Treadwell said.
Interestingly, players with team seniority sit way in back. More junior players sit closer to the front of the plane’s coach section.
Food, security
Treadwell works with Delta to provide an onboard menu geared to being “healthy and balanced.”
“A team tradition is to have a fun, pre-trip meal catered by Chick-fil-A, the fast food chain,” he said.
“We don’t have to go through the front door of the airport terminal, but we do have to go through security like everybody else.”
And there’s all that freight. About 7,000 pounds goes on the plane and the remainder on a truck. It includes uniforms, helmets, footballs, trainers’ equipment and a machine that tosses footballs.
At the hotel
The team leaves for Sunday games on Saturday. They step off the plane and onto buses and head for their hotel, where they have their own satellite check-in area. Within 10 minutes the players are in their rooms.
“We try to put the players on one floor and the coaches on one floor – and we don’t want to mix my groups with other guests,” Treadwell said.
Despite the size of the players, “they don’t need anything really special in their rooms. It’s not like basketball players.”
There are no “diva requests” either. The players are a “very professional group” and they look at away games as business trips, according to Treadwell. For meals, the team’s nutritionist and strength coaches “are there to encourage healthy behavior.”
“We’re there for 18 hours, and it comes down to eat, meet and sleep.”
Rigid schedule
After checking in and a brief rest, the players head to a banquet room for dinner and a meeting about the game.
The schedule is pretty rigid – one hour of down time, chapel and mass, one hour of meetings, a snack at 10:45 p.m., followed by curfew at 11 p.m.
If the team is playing on the west coast, they arrive a day earlier and stay on East Coast time, including a 9 p.m. curfew, Treadwell said.
“We find a practice site and simulate our normal Saturday activity on a Friday. Last year we used the San Diego Padres baseball stadium for practice, and the guys loved it. They talked about their own baseball playing days, and it was a real nostalgic event.”
Hurricane Sandy (and other unknowns)
As with any travel, contingency plans must be made for the unforeseeable, including weather.
“We were in Philadelphia the Sunday before Hurricane Sandy hit, and we were in constant touch with the league all week.
“I always have at least a Plan B for bus breakdown, an issue with the trucks or with the hotel. With Sandy we had three backup plans and were ready to deal if we got stuck in Philadelphia.
“I am paid to be ahead of everybody else. I have an operations meeting with the general manager and coach every week to talk about what’s going on in the next city. I tell them what to expect.
“The main lesson for any group travel planner is to stay ahead and have backup plans.”
Year-round job
Despite involving only a dozen games during a regular season, the travel logistics portion of Treadwell’s job is a lot bigger than it sounds. “The NFL is a 365-day a year league now. All my heavy lifting is done in the off season – booking hotels, chartering flights and buses.”
(The facilities part of his job involves managing the team’s training facility in delightfully-named Flowery Branch, Ga., about 60 miles from Hartsfield International Airport.)
“If you boil my job down,” said Treadwell, “it’s trying to provide a distraction-free environment so these guys focus only on the game and I worry about the rest.”
It’s a job Treadwell loves. “This is my home town team. I have always been a Falcons fan, and I’m living the dream of all dreams. I’m the luckiest of the lucky.”
