Life on the road with a pro sports team. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds but it is a great way to travel.
What’s it like with the B.C. Lions? Well let’s look at this week’s trip to Ottawa.
We usually get an email from Tyler Gammon - the Lions football ops manager - a couple of days beforehand with an itinerary in terms of flight times, hotels, meeting rooms for players and bus departures. Neil McEvoy – the team’s VP of Football Ops – also sends out an email with seating assignments for the flight.
Unless it’s a playoff game, the team usually flies out the day before.
In this instance, it’s a 7 a.m. departure from the South Terminal at YVR. That means getting there around 6:30 a.m., parking your car and then walking into the terminal which is about a two-minute procedure.
Once our WestJet charter is ready, we simply walk out the door, onto the tarmac and up the ramp to the aircraft where our regular flight crew greets us. I say regular because we do have the same WestJet crew all season long. It’s a crew that has been hand-picked with over 1,000 flight attendants applying for these coveted positions and some having to go through an interview process as well before being selected.
Our crew, headed up by WestJet Director of Charters Jereme Kincaid, is awesome and provides us with great service. The aircraft is nice but it’s not pimped up like something you would see on an NFL, NBA or NHL charter but the crew is second-to-none.
Much like the team bus, there is a seating hierarchy on the aircraft. The first row of business class will be reserved for head coach Buck Pierce, president Duane Vienneau and general manager Ryan Rigmaiden. Behind them are the other assistant coaches.
The next tier has equipment and training staff, followed by the Lions communications team as well as us. After that it’s the players, usually with position groups being seated together.
This week’s flight to Ottawa will be around four-and-a-half hours. With an early departure, most will take that time to get some extra sleep while others will take the opportunity to maybe get in some extra film or playbook study. Some will just chill, watch a movie or play video games.
When we land, two buses await the team on the tarmac. There is also a truck waiting that will haul the team’s equipment to the stadium where the support staff will set up the Lions locker room.
You simply walk off the plane, pickup your checked-in luggage and place it on one of the buses. From there, it’s about a 15-minute drive to downtown Ottawa. We arrive at the hotel with all the room keys in packets on a table in the lobby. You simply walk over, find the packet with your name on it and you're set.
It’s during this time that we’ll interview the players that we need for our pre-game show in the lobby before they go to their meetings.
With that done, it’s up to the room for several hours to continue prep work. That means editing the audio from the interviews and e-mailing that in or maybe doing some work on the flipchart that’s used during the broadcast.
For dinner, myself, colour analyst Giulio Caravatta and producer Trevor Martins like to pick a restaurant to check out. We hit a home run in Montreal with Jacapo – an Italian restaurant in the Old Port District. Jacopo even impressed Caravatta, who is a food snob when it comes to Italian.
Sometimes we’ll have some of the Lions management or communications team join us while on other occasions someone from the city we are in will meet us as is the case this week with Ottawa play-by- play voice A.J. Jakubec.
After dinner, it’s back to the hotel maybe for a nightcap or two. With an evening kickoff, you might take some extra liberties but if it’s an early game, it’s a mellow night.
As for game day, it’s usually pretty lax. Our hotels always give us late checkouts around 4 p.m., so that helps immensely.
With a 7:30 p.m. kickoff at TD Place, the players will have meetings early in the day. As for us, the late game in Ottawa gives us an opportunity for some sightseeing. Walking to the Parliament Buildings is always a great way to spend a sunny afternoon and it’s usually followed up by lunch in the ByWard Market District.
From there, it’s back to the hotel where the team buses depart three hours before kickoff. Martins will usually go ahead of time to make sure all the broadcast equipment is set-up and a connection is established with our flagship station CKNW 730 while we take the bus.
Once at the stadium, I like to hang out at field level and hopefully catch-up with players and coaches from the other team.
From there, it’s up to the broadcast booth to get organized. It starts with figuring out where Giulio and I sit dependent on replay monitors and site lines. Ottawa is a good setup while Hamilton is the absolute worst. Not only are you situated at the ten-yard line in the Hammer, you’re so high up you might as well
be calling the game from Guelph.
The next order of business is organizing our ‘live reads’ which are divided into three categories: pre-game, in-game and post-game – which number over 30. We usually bring a Skip or Uber order from the hotel. In Winnipeg, that means banh mi from Khanh Hoa which is to die for. In Calgary, it means Momma’s Meat Loaf from Spolumbo’s. Sometimes we get something at the stadium. In Edmonton, they have a mini-donut stand outside the press box which is always taken advantage of and the Popeye’s concession stand is close as well.
The best pre-game meal is at BMO Field in Toronto where Corina Mark, the Argos press box attendant, always looks after us!
The broadcast? That’s the fun part.
You’re hoping to call a good game but sometimes mistakes happen. My hope is that they don’t come during a big play. That has a tendency to gnaw at me for a while.
After the game, we will help Martins tear down the equipment and get it back on the bus.
It’s usually a full hour or more after the final whistle before the buses are loaded at the stadium and we depart. If the Lions win, I’ll take that time to unwind and smoke my victory cigar. A loss means no cigar and just waiting on the bus!
The buses then take us to the airport and onto the tarmac beside the aircraft as we load up to go home.
If the team has won, the mood on the charter will be a good one. A loss means a quiet flight home.
The eastern trips are killers if there’s a late kickoff. With a 7:30 p.m. start in Ottawa this Friday, we will be lucky to be at YVR by 4 a.m. The game in Hamilton this year wasn’t only a late start (7:30 p.m.) but it also went into overtime. That resulted in touching down at YVR around 4:30 a.m.
The game in Toronto, meanwhile, was an afternoon start which saw us back by midnight.
Once we touchdown at YVR, you walk off the plane, grab your luggage, walk through the terminal and to your car in a span of three minutes. At 4 a.m. and dead tired, you do not believe how much this is appreciated.
All in all, it’s a whirlwind but make no mistake about it. We all consider ourselves lucky to experience this way of travelling.
Veteran B.C. sports personality Bob “the Moj” Marjanovich writes about the B.C. sporting scene for Black Press Media. This column is brought to you by:
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