The road to the Final Four begins with nearly 1,500 phone calls and plenty of cups of coffee.
Forget about the teams that got snubbed by the bubble-bursting selection committee. Never mind the coaches that whined over low seeds liked spoiled socialites turned away at a nightclub opening.
Try arranging air transportation for about 12,000 people in 24 hours. Now that's March Madness.
Short's Travel Management, a family owned agency in Waterloo, Iowa, burned the midnight oil for the second consecutive year, working the phones like a stockbroker on a permanent caffeine kick to take care of the 129 men's and women's college basketball teams in the NCAA tournaments.
Short's, in conjunction with the NCAA, booked all the flights for the participants in this year's tournaments. By Monday afternoon -- less than a day after the men's 65-team and women's 64-team fields scrolled across television sets everywhere -- schools traveling through the air had their first-round travel information in place.
"It gets a little bit crazy here," Short's president, David LeCompte, said. "We're working 16-20 hours days. People come in shifts. There's a lot of overtime."
A staff of 25 agents works with four NCAA travel representatives to ensure a smooth operation. LeCompte estimates that 80 percent of tournament travel is done through the air, while the rest of the teams make it to their destinations on the open road. NCAA rules require teams located within 300 miles of their first-round site take charter buses.
Traveling the friendly skies is often a source of angst for teams that prefer charter flights to commercial ones. The NCAA, which has a $10.5 million travel budget for March Madness this year, always looks into feasible commercial flights before exploring charters.
"We have to manage our resources," said Joyce Collins, the NCAA's director of accounting. "There's a limit to the number of planes we can charter. We're going to get complaints. It's pretty consistent every year. Even if we charter someone, maybe they can't get there the exact time they wanted. Or maybe they're not flying out of the closest airport."
Even charter flights, LeCompte says, can be delayed.
"What most people are not aware of is that a charter isn't just moving one team on a particular day," LeCompte said. "The plane gets to a destination, turns around and picks up another team. One (plane) could pick up three or four teams a day. And at any point, there could be a delay that backs up the whole process.
"Behind the scenes, it's a logistical nightmare. But we try not to expose the teams to that."
Despite their preparation -- Short's agents have worked with carriers and charter companies for nearly 10 months -- some problems are unavoidable. Others are just plain wacky.
Snowstorms, of course, often delay flights and create flight crew shortages. But Short's had to deal with a couple of unforeseen challenges last year.
A charter flight scheduled to pick up a team in Florida was delayed at a Caribbean island after a bomb threat was called in at the airport.
The death of a passenger -- not associated with any team -- on a commercial flight caused another team to wait for five hours and catch a later flight.
A pair of New Jersey teams in this year's tournaments hopes to avoid those obstacles.
The Rutgers women, the No. 3 seed in the Philadelphia regional, won't have to deal with the hassles of air travel -- at least at the start. The Scarlet Knights will load their players, coaches, administrators, cheerleaders and band members on charter buses for the three-hour trip to Storrs, Conn., for the first two rounds. Rutgers already has existing relationships with bus companies to coordinate travel.
"Sometimes, it's easier by bus," Rutgers deputy athletic director Joe Quinlan said. "You load up the bus, you get there, you unload. You're not going through the airport, landing at a connecting city. You don't have all those transportation movements."
The relatively close venues ensures the Scarlet Knights will not go through their travel nightmare of five years ago, when a late commercial flight made for a hasty turnaround before their 2000 Final Four appearance in Philadelphia. Rutgers, fresh off a victory against Georgia in the Elite Eight in Portland, Ore., had an afternoon commercial flight -- with one connection -- back to Philadelphia the next day. Georgia, meanwhile, took a charter flight home.
NCAA officials called an audible, booking an earlier flight for the Rutgers coaching staff so it could get back to campus and prepare for the next opponent.
"In the end, it worked out fine," Quinlan said. "The coaches got back early enough to begin breaking down film. The agencies have a big job. If you ask the coaches and administrators if we'd rather take a charter, the answer is probably going to be yes. But we understand it's not possible for everybody."
The Fairleigh Dickinson men's team, the No. 16 seed in the Chicago regional, will have enough on its mind against top-seeded Illinois tomorrow. The last thing they needed was to worry about travel nightmares. The team took a direct commercial flight out of LaGuardia Airport yesterday morning into Indianapolis. The rest of their travel party of roughly 50 people will leave this afternoon. The school took advantage of Short's online pre-registration system to facilitate the entire process.
"We pre-loaded all of our travel information on their Web site," associate athletic director Ann Gulino said. "It was a huge relief for us."
Like all teams traveling by air, Short's only booked one-way flights. Each team learns of its return flight information after they're eliminated from the tournament.
"Our ultimate goal is for travel to be an afterthought for the schools," LeCompte said. "We need to take care of that. That's our job. That's what we do." |
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