NORTHRIDGE, Calif. – The trip to LAX was as exciting as ever. Shortly before heading to the airport, the team’s flight was canceled, forcing John Fitzgerald,
DU’s director of basketball operations, to scramble and try to rebook
20 seats on the next scheduled flight. When dealing with road trips,
guys like Fitzgerald are often the unsung heroes. Anyone who has been
stuck rescheduling a flight for himself knows what a pain it can be.
These guys have to deal with 20 people. On top of that, he’s in charge
of making sure the bus is at the airport when we arrive and, perhaps
most important, how the team is going to eat dinner. After arriving at
the hotel, the players dropped off their bags and then went straight to
the hotel restaurant, where sandwiches and fruit salad were waiting for
them. The thing about Fitzgerald’s job is that his work is generally
only recognized when something goes wrong. Fortunately for all of us,
Fitzgerald makes sure everything runs so smoothly that we often don’t
even know there might have been a problem.
The
drive from the airport to the hotel was only about 30 miles, but it
took about an hour to get there. That got me thinking about the many
comments we get about the places we travel, especially within the Sun
Belt Conference. To put it in perspective, Denton, Texas, (North Texas)
is less than 45 minutes from the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.
Murfreesboro, Tenn., (Middle Tennessee) is about 30 minutes from
Nashville, which is also within about an hour of Bowling Green, Ky.
(Western Kentucky). In other words, the majority of the places we travel
are within a short bus trip of a major airport, although there of
course are a few exceptions.
As
we were driving around the campus on the way to the gym, it appeared
there may be more land devoted to parking lots than campus buildings
here at Cal State Northridge. There are 36,208 students enrolled, and I
was told that all of them commute. The high enrollment number is not
reflected in the size of the Matadome, which holds 1,500 people.
Needless to say, it’s a cozy atmosphere. It’s 1:30 p.m., and the team is
at shoot around, a little later than usual. Generally teams shoot
around in the morning so that there is plenty of time to recover before
the game. However, the facilities have to be shared with other sports,
like men and women’s volleyball which also play at the Matadome, so the
teams take what they can get. Finally, when you’re talking about a
school this big in a place like California, it’s hard not to mention the
famous alumni of the school. This one has quite a few: Phil Hartman,
Paula Abdul, Richard Dreyfuss, Eva Mendez and Bob Eubanks, just to name a
few. No report if any of them are heading to the Matadome to watch the
game.
Yearly travel totals:
Total Flights – 9
Total Mileage Flown – 5,731
Total Bus Miles – 903
Total Number of Hotels – 6
Total Number of Different Airports – 6
Total Number of Airline Delays – 1
Total Number of Bags Lost – 0
Total Number of Ice Cream Drops on Mitch Hyder’s Pants – 1 (Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Therapy)
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