Why bowl week is different
Three things change at once. The hotel is larger and the stay is longer, so there are more people with more kinds of credential moving through more corridors for more days. The staff is tired and the mood is festive, which is when the itinerary gets left in the bar. And the stakes are highest, so a rival who would never bother in October has every reason to pay attention in December. The same is true of a conference championship, at a smaller scale and with less notice.
The advance does not make the week secure. It makes the program the best-prepared party in a building full of parties.
When the bowl is announced
The hotel is usually assigned by the bowl, which means the first question is not which hotel but who else is in it. The advance asks the bowl's operations staff for the property's other blocks that week: sponsors, media, the opposing team's official party, alumni groups. The answer determines whether the coaches' floor can be a floor and how far the meeting rooms are from the lobby.
Meeting space is requested in writing, with three conditions: no connecting doors to rooms the program does not control, no shared drop ceiling with a public corridor, and no audiovisual equipment the program did not bring. Bowl hotels are generous with meeting space and casual about who had the room before you.
Two weeks out
- The coaches' floor is assigned as a block, with the head coach and coordinators away from the elevator lobby and the ice machine. Rooming lists are sent to the hotel and to no one else; the version the travel party receives has names, not room numbers.
- The key list is written. Who holds a master, who holds a meeting-room key, and who at the hotel can cut a new one. The answer to the last question is usually any front-desk employee, which is why the meeting room is also inspected each morning.
- The device and document plan for the trip is decided. The full-season install stays home. The recruiting board stays home. The staff is told what travels and what does not, once, by the director of operations.
- The hotel's director of security and the local police liaison are identified by name. The advance speaks to both before arrival. Bowl week brings its own police detail; the program should know who is on it.
- The practice site is walked, or its plans are. Sightlines from parking structures, adjacent buildings and public roads are noted. Drones are a question for the local police, who usually have an answer.
The day before the team arrives
The advance is in the building a day early. The meeting rooms are inspected: fixtures, furniture, wiring, the ceiling, the audiovisual cabinet, the speakerphone that is always live. Where the program has contracted a technical inspection, this is when it is done, so that the report exists before the first meeting rather than after it. The coaches' floor is walked. The keys are counted against the travel party. The route from the buses to the elevators is walked at the time of day the team will arrive.
The hotel's security director is met in person and given a single telephone number for the program. That conversation is worth more than any document. Hotels take care of guests who have introduced themselves.
During the week
- The meeting room is inspected each morning before the first meeting, by a member of the operations staff following the checklist the advance leaves behind. Five minutes.
- The whiteboards are photographed and erased at the end of each session by the same person. The photographs go to a program-controlled account, not a personal telephone.
- Printed material is collected at the door. Itineraries, depth charts, scripts. The recycling bin is emptied by the staff, not the hotel.
- The three rules for the hotel bar are repeated once at the first staff meeting: no work talk where you can be overheard, no telephone face up on the table, no itinerary in the jacket pocket. Said pleasantly. Said anyway.
- The response contact is live. Threats, lost devices and the reporter who knows something are all handled by the same person with the same process, and the staff knows who that is.
The morning the buses leave
The meeting rooms are cleared and photographed. Devices are counted on the bus. The keys are returned and the count is confirmed with the front desk. The advance writes a one-page note for the operations staff: what worked, what the hotel did well, what to ask for next time. That note is the beginning of next year's advance.
The checklist stays
The first advance is done with the firm. The checklist it produces is written so that the operations staff can run the next one without us, and most do. A program's second bowl is better prepared than its first because someone wrote down what the first one taught.
The travel security advance · The coaches' floor: a room-assignment protocol