Two thousand miles. Two days.

These numbers didn’t apply to most of the Iowa football team when it traveled to Pasadena, California, for a game against UCLA on Nov. 8.

For players and coaches, road trips are an opportunity to kick their feet up and relax on a chartered flight. Leave the day before the game and arrive in a few hours.

For equipment staff, an away game means time spent behind the wheel – in this case, 26 hours. This regular-season westward trip was Iowa’s first since 2010 when it traveled to Arizona in September.

Fourteen years later, the team’s black-and-gold, 18-wheel semi-truck made a similar journey across the country. But the venture from the gray skies of Iowa City to the palm trees of Pasadena wasn’t a straight shot – like any trek, it contained its fair share of detours. Amid all the equipment team’s preparation, there’s room for improvisation – both inside the truck and on the sidelines.

Enter Kevin Foor, the Director of Equipment Operations for the Iowa Hawkeyes. Foor is in his third year as the head equipment manager and 24th overall with the Hawkeyes.

As director, Foor’s job is to oversee all of the equipment staff for all 22 Iowa athletic teams. One of his main duties is football, a role that he took over from long-time manager Greg Morris prior to the 2024 season.

During a typical away game, Foor and his team will load the truck on the Wednesday before the game. But since the UCLA game took place on a Friday, the process was moved up a day. 

“It’s just basically a day earlier, not a whole lot different,” Foor said. “It’s just a lot farther.”

Despite the magnitude of the trip, the planning process was identical to any other game.

“It’s not a whole lot different, just because it’s still the same stuff that we take, no matter whether we’re just going to Illinois or going to UCLA, take the same stuff,” Foor said. “Obviously, people look forward to it because UCLA is in Los Angeles.”

Once the big day arrives, Foor and his four student managers will pack the truck after Iowa’s morning practice with the goal of finishing their job by mid-morning to allow the truck to begin its trip. After the truck is loaded and ready to drive, the job then falls on the shoulders of truck driver Joe Claeys.

Claeys is in his fourth season as the Hawkeyes’ driver and has been a truck driver for over 38 years, including 37 years with Heartland Express Inc., a trucking company based in nearby North Liberty, Iowa.

Claeys earned the job after becoming the most senior driver on Heartland’s staff and has built up an impressive track record during his lengthy career.

“He’s very reliable,” Foor said. “He’s one of Heartland’s best drivers. To my understanding, he has over 3 million miles logged without an accident, which 3 million miles alone is hard to fathom, and doing so without an accident is even more impressive.”

Foor only sees Claeys for about an hour while the truck is being loaded for away games but praises the mild-mannered driver for his consistency.

“He’s always from point A to point B; always shows up,” Foor said. “He’s there when we get there, which is a good thing, and he’s a fairly quiet guy, so sometimes you don’t even know he’s around.” 

Claeys is normally the sole driver for shorter road trips, but the longer distance required second driver Ad Dunbar, who will also be needed in the trip for Saturday’s game at College Park, Maryland, when Iowa takes on the Maryland Terrapins.

Other two-driver trips occur when Penn State or Rutgers is on the schedule, but otherwise, the primary driver is Claeys. He drove each of the Hawkeyes’ treks to Minnesota, Michigan State, and Ohio State. 

Like Foor and the equipment staff, Claeys’ preparation for this trip was the same except for one main factor – the weather.

“We’re absolutely looking for weather in the Rockies, and they’ll have to determine which route to take,” Foor said before the trip. “They won’t probably look until they take off to see which route they want to go and make sure all of the roads are open.”

And that’s precisely what happened.

During the trip, a large snowstorm struck the state of Colorado, making roads impassable. 

According to the National Weather Service, the storm was the third-largest November snowstorm on record for Denver and its 11th-largest overall.

Since the journey would take drivers right through Denver, Claeys had no choice but to pivot and drive south through New Mexico and Arizona, costing them about 200 more miles of driving. 

“We were a little more cognizant of the weather,” Claeys added.

Driving to California is no easy task, especially with an 18-wheeler. Despite the weather challenges, the rest of the trek was a smooth ride.

 To pass the time on these long trips, Claeys will often listen to podcasts or music, especially country music. Claeys reminisced about older country artists such as Alabama, a band that coincidentally has a 1984 song titled “Roll On,” which describes a family staying up late at night waiting for their trucker father to come home.

 “That’s the good stuff,” Claeys said.

Both drivers also like to watch movies or shows when not behind the wheel, and there was always beautiful scenery along the way, especially when they enter the foothills of California.

Family road trips will often see many stops, but not this trip. Claeys and his team have a strict schedule to keep, so stops are limited to food and fuel to keep the truck moving.

That schedule also forced the drivers to sleep in the cab instead of stopping for a hotel room, and the two drivers switched between sleeping and driving throughout the trip in order to get to the Rose Bowl on time.

All of this paid off, resulting in the drivers arriving at the stadium before their set time. The truck needed to be in Pasadena by 4:30 p.m. Pacific on Thursday but ended up arriving three hours earlier.

“We like to get there a little early just in case there are some delays,” Claeys said.

Once the truck rolled up to the stadium gate, UCLA staff directed the drivers to the landing zone on the press box side of the stadium, which houses the visiting locker rooms.

“They’ll open up the visitors’ locker room, then we’ll wait for the crew to get there,” Claeys said. “This time we got help, and we unloaded most of the trailer before the crew got there. So then we just set up the locker room on Thursday night.”

The Rose Bowl celebrated 100 years of operation this season, but Foor said that its locker rooms are among the best in college football. Recent renovations to the venue included new locker rooms, with each having similar dimensions and amenities to accommodate the teams playing in the annual Rose Bowl Game.

“It was massive,” Foor said. “It’s 50 yards long. I mean, it’s huge. It’s got 89 lockers in it. It’s got a large coaches locker room, another auxiliary locker room for all the support staff, graduate assistants, analysts, operations folks. It’s more than ideal.”

But not all of the Big Ten’s visiting locker rooms are immaculate. Foor has been to plenty of locker rooms during his career and offered his least favorite options. Foor said that Purdue hasn’t changed its facility in over 30 years, dating back to when he was a UI student. He also considers the setup at Maryland as a “cracker box.”

Once the locker room is ready to go, Foor and his team head back to their hotel and rest up for a busy game day. New technology has added another task to the list: providing the necessary equipment for the game.

Prior to the 2024 season, the NCAA legalized coach-to-player communication, which has existed in the National Football League since 1994. Only one player on each side of the field is allowed to use the system—the quarterback on offense and usually the middle linebacker on defense.

“You want to make sure that the volume is set good enough so he can hear his coach talk to him in his headset,” Foor said.

In March, Foor visited the Kansas City Chiefs equipment staff to acquaint himself with the technology. The Chiefs’ system is identical to Iowa’s, making the technology “quite simple,” according to Foor. 

The system is manufactured by GSC, a company based in Wahoo, Nebraska. The company preprograms the various frequencies used by all of the Power Four college football teams.

“It just ties in with our coach’s headphone system and basically through a walkie-talkie,” Foor said.

Foor and his team’s knowledge of the system would quickly be tested during the UCLA game.

Starting quarterback Brendan Sullivan was injured in the third quarter and left the game, but the staff had already prepared a helmet for backup Jackson Stratton, who remained the starter for the rest of the game.

The same issue also emerged on the defensive side of the ball when star middle linebacker Jay Higgins went down with a soft tissue injury in the second quarter. Higgins tried to return to the game but left after his next series after the injury caused him further discomfort. Backup linebacker Jackson Harell entered the game in Higgins’ place.

“We had a backup helmet for him [Harell] that was already on the right channel for him,” Foor said. “We do that during pregame.”

Foor and his team also watch carefully for any damaged helmets to avoid having players sit out for an extended period. The natural rough, ragged play of the game can rip facemasks off, bend clips, or even chip off a piece of the helmet.

“We’re just constantly looking to find issues,” Foor said.

The Hawkeyes play their home games at Kinnick Stadium on turf, but the Rose Bowl has a natural grass surface, something that was also in place at Michigan State, where Iowa visited back on Oct.19. To adjust to the change, players will have multiple pairs of cleats.

One of the shoes is molded, meaning that its studs and bumps are permanently placed in the sole, but some players use cleats that Foor called “seven studs” due to the temporary studs placed into the shoe for better footing.  

The staff is also responsible for monitoring any weather that could arrive during the game. It didn’t happen on this night, but rain jackets and special shoes are ready just in case, which for Foor is “a real pain” to prepare.

While the equipment staff is busy tending to any football-related needs, Claeys’ job is simple. He gets to watch the game from the sideline with field passes, which means plenty of interactions with the players and head coach Kirk Ferentz, whom he says is a “nice guy.”

But this wasn’t just any stadium; it was the historic Rose Bowl Stadium, a venue that has hosted some of college football’s most legendary games.

“It was a place that I had always seen on TV and wanted to see,” Claeys said. “It had a much wider sideline than any other place I’ve ever been to.”

The experience is a dream for Claeys, who grew up in Iowa City and is a lifelong Hawkeye fan. He’s witnessed some of the most memorable teams in Iowa history, such as the 1985 Big Ten championship squad, but pivots toward one play as his favorite.

“Definitely the 2005 Capital One Bowl when [quarterback] Drew Tate and [receiver] Warren Holloway had that last-second pass that won the game,” Claeys said.

That 1985 Hawkeye football squad earned a bid to the 1986 Rose Bowl but suffered a dismal 45-28 defeat. More than three decades later, the 2024 squad endured a similar fate against UCLA in Week 11. 

The Hawkeyes jumped out to a 10-0 lead in the first quarter, but the aforementioned injuries allowed the Bruins to mount a comeback, and they held on for a 20-17 victory. It marked the Hawkeyes’ fifth consecutive loss in the Rose Bowl. Their last win was in 1959.

To ensure the team left the stadium in a timely manner after the game, Foor and his staff began to pack up the truck in the third quarter. They couldn’t get everything in the truck right away, but it sped up the process.

Once the game ended, some of the Iowa players headed over to the postgame press conferences, while most got dressed and ready for the trip home. As the players were being interviewed, the truck was meticulously packed full of large, black crates.

The process took roughly one hour, and then it was time to drive back to Iowa City. 

While players and coaches most likely stewed over the loss on the flight back later that night, Foors and Claeys can hold their heads up high for a job well done.

“Besides the game, everything else was successful,” Claeys said.