University of Tennessee Athletics
Passion, Details Drive Football Managers
September 17, 2009 | Football
Sept. 17, 2009
BY DREW EDWARDS
UTSports.com
It's early Wednesday afternoon, and Chris Woolsey is counting out loud.
"Ninety-three," Woolsey says, tossing a pair of orange shorts in a pile.
"Ninety-three," says another voice in Tennessee's equipment, checking defensive tackle Montori Hughes' name on a list.
And so it goes, down the line for each player on Tennessee's dress roster for Saturday's 3:30 p.m. kickoff (TV: CBS) at top-ranked Florida. Earlier in the week Woolsey, a graduate student in sport management and UT's head manager, numbered every pair of shorts that he's now getting ready to pack in an orange equipment trunk.
And that's just for Friday's walk-through practice in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
When it comes to making sure the football team has what it needs on a daily basis, Tennessee's equipment managers employ equal parts attention to detail and passion for the team.
"When you see the guys out there with everything they've got on and no equipment's breaking during the game and no shoe problems, anything like that," says manager Cody Sunderland, "you know you've done your job."
Moving Day
Thursday is moving day for the Tennessee football team. And home or away, it's the same routine.
"It doesn't matter if you have to move it 12 feet or 1,200 miles, you're still moving it," says Max Parrott, UT's assistant equipment manager.
Parrott, who along with equipment manager Roger Frazier and assistant Allen Sitzler make up UT's full-time equipment staff, are in charge of moving some 13,000 pounds of equipment and supplies each week.
If the Vols are playing at home, the trip is from the Neyland-Thompson Sports Center to Neyland Stadium. This week the journey is a little longer, about 550 miles to Gainesville, Fla.
Still, the task remains the same. If there's anything a football team could possibly need during the course of a game, pack it. Actually, pack two.
"Fraze's motto is, `If they make it, we take it,'" Parrott said. "It's better to have it and not need it than to not have it and get your rear end chewed out. I don't care if we're playing in the desert, I'm taking rain gear."
In fact, only once - when the Vols played at Syracuse in 1998 - does Parrott recall not packing any rain gear. Quite often, there's a Noah's ark mentality to the packing process, too. And it has nothing to do with preparing for rain.
"The average fan would not believe the amount of equipment we take," Parrott says. "We take a portable hospital, almost. Because it's Florida, we'll have the (sideline) air-conditioning units. We'll have the Gatorade drinks. We'll have the backup jersey trunk. Backup helmets, backup shoulder pads. Everything. You want to make sure you've got something to fall back on."
Not only is all the game equipment meticulously checked and rechecked as it's packed and loaded, the equipment staff packs extras of just about everything.
It's not quite two-by-two, but it's close.
The tasks are split among Frazier, Parrott, Sitzler and 15 student assistants, all of whom work seven days a week during football season.
"My duty is I make sure all the shoulder pads are put on the rack. I get all the shoulder pads out of the locker room and stuff like that," said Sunderland, a junior who played high school football at Maryville. "You don't want one to get left behind. That would be a problem."
But the job is more than just packing equipment.
Each manager helps set up drills during practice, and each is responsible for a specific position. The goal, Parrott says, is to make sure the only thing UT's coaches have to do at practice is coach their players.
Sunderland works with the defensive backs, as well as special teams.
"I meet with coach (Eddie) Gran every day and he tells me what drills he needs set up or what the drills look like (on special teams)," he said. "I'm in charge of getting all that stuff and making sure it's done."
But Sunderland and the rest of the managers don't just want to get the myriad jobs done. They make sure it's done right.
Once more, with feeling
For Woolsey, UT's head manager, there's only been room for one football team in his life. And there was only place he ever considered going to college.
"Tennessee football was always No. 1 for me," said Woolsey, who has been a student manager since the spring of 2006. "I just always thought it would be a great thrill to do whatever I can to help out and be able to run through the `T.' "
It's the same story, down the line.
Frazier, Parrott and Sitzler all began their careers as student managers. Several others in the athletic department including David Blackburn, who now serves as senior associate athletics director for administration and football operations, found an outlet for their passion by working in the equipment cage.
And it definitely takes passion.
On Monday, several managers were busy scrubbing cleats to remove grass stains from Saturday's game. They tape jerseys to shoulder pads, clean helmets, do laundry, clean up spills in the locker room and a hundred other things most people never notice.
"Every day when I go in the laundry room and before I throw anything in the dryer, I have to open up the dryer bins and take a vacuum cleaner and get the lint out of there," Woolsey says. "I would never have imagined that would have been part of my job when I signed up to be a manager."
But it's all done with incredible attention to detail.
By the time Tennessee's football team arrives at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium early Saturday afternoon, the managers will have been working for hours. Even after bussing to Gainesville overnight on Thursday (the managers and trainers also bus home, and won't arrive until around 5 a.m. Sunday), everything will be laid out, just so.
"I'd say 65-70 percent (of the job) is presentation," Parrott says. "When they put the jerseys on the shoulder pads, they want it to look good. When they hang the game pants, they want to have the adidas logo sticking out. You just don't throw it in there. The shoes are put out a certain way. The socks are put out a certain way. They take pride in what they do."
Says Sunderland: "As long as all the equipment's on the truck, as long as the players have their jerseys and uniforms and they look good, we know we've done our job right."
`Another Way'
When Tennessee played at Kentucky in 2007, Woolsey couldn't fight back the tears.
Handling the game balls on UT's sideline, the emotion of that game got to Woolsey and one of his fellow student managers. And that was only in the second of six overtimes.
"We both had tears in our eyes because it was so emotional, so up and down," Woolsey says. "You couldn't control yourself, and everything was on the line there. When we finally won, it was just a moment you'll never forget, and I don't think I can ever top."
That's the passion part of the equation. Add to that a close knit bond between managers, even managers and players, and that's why UT's equipment staff works so hard to make sure everything goes smoothly on Saturday - and every other day.
"Most of our guys are high school football players, and most of them played high school football in Tennessee," Parrott says. "They've always wanted to come to school here. They take a lot of pride in it. Some of these guys wish they could (play or walk on), but they know they wouldn't be able to and so they like to contribute in another way.
"When we win, everybody wins. When we lose, everybody loses. It's been a tough ride home on that bus from Gainesville a couple times, but it's also been a great ride home."
Parrott pauses for just a second, and looks up from his desk which sits in a room filled with decades' worth of equipment, memorabilia and souvenirs.
"It goes a lot quicker," he says, "when you win down there."
Follow the Vols on Twitter @UTAthletics, and read Drew Edwards' blog, The Inside Source.
