SAN ANTONIO -- Whether they arrived in the Alamo city from their hometowns across the country or on the team charter from Eugene, the Oregon Ducks did so with a common theme Saturday.



Very little checked baggage.



Though the No. 15 Ducks (9-3) will spend the next eight days here ahead of the Jan. 2 Alamo Bowl against No. 11 TCU (10-2), there were two, 53-foot-long reasons to pack lightly.



Those would be the trailers, packed to the gills with apparel and other football gear, driven from Eugene's Hatfield-Dowlin Complex to southern Texas that carried everything the Ducks will need or wear until they depart. From special-edition Air Jordan 14s for their feet, sweat-wicking travel suits for the street, to tackling dummies, clocks and speakers for practices, the supplies necessary for 117 players and 40-plus staffers required an extra trailer than UO uses in conference play, when only 70 players are allowed to travel.

"It's basically the HDC on wheels," said Aaron "Pooh" Wasson, Oregon's director of equipment operations.

Wasson, who joined UO in 2011, is by now used to logistical challenges of this scale: Last season UO played in two bowl games 11 days and half a country apart as part of the inaugural College Football Playoff.

TP Trucking of Central Point, which has transported Oregon's football equipment for years, delivered the gear again this week. It took two drivers four days and one brief stop in the Siskiyou Mountains to add snow chains to travel the roughly 2,200 miles to the River Walk, which is a short stroll from the Alamodome, the game's site.



The most precious cargo, of course, was the Ducks themselves, who sprinkled into the team's River Walk hotel throughout the day after a week off, before the team charter brought the rest, en masse, on a grey and windy 75-degree Saturday afternoon.



With the exception of a handful of players whose flights were delayed, all players were accounted for and are eligible, coach Mark Helfrich said, with no one left home for reasons disciplinary, academic or otherwise.



Keeping track of Oregon's various Nike gear this week is, principally, the job of Wasson and Kenny Farr, who is in charge of the football program's equipment specifically.



The trucks arrived Christmas Eve, Wasson and the managers a day later and the work began immediately out of a hotel ballroom. Some coaches like to arrive from the charter and immediately begin watching film, meaning banquet rooms were turned into meeting spaces with remotes ready to rewind and fast forward through game tape. Two hours of Saturday morning were devoted to decorating the 40-plus rooms of staffers and their families with welcome gifts.

"It took us about two weeks prior to the holiday break" to prepare for bowl logistics, said Osbaldo Escatel, an equipment manager overseeing 10 student managers and five volunteers. Fingering a silver and gray jacket adorned with a Ducks head logo, Escatel estimated he'd worked 18-to-20 hours since arriving Friday.



There was, perhaps, a question of enthusiasm for Oregon given it played in this bowl game just two years ago, though the city and bowl staff receiving nothing but glowing reviews Saturday. (TCU, meanwhile, hasn't played in San Antonio since 1952.)



"San Antonio, Texas, is a beautiful place," said defensive end DeForest Buckner, the Pac-12 Conference's defensive player of the year. "We're all excited to play a good team like TCU in the game.

"Every bowl is a big game to be honest. There are few teams playing right now and a lot of teams watching bowl games. We take it as serious as last year."



Familiarity for the managers tasked with setting it all up, however, is a very good thing. The Ducks are staying at the same hotel and practicing at the same site -- Alamo Heights High School -- as they did before their 2013 Alamo Bowl win against Texas, and as such the business of preparing for the bowl felt "routine," Wasson said.



Upon arrival, the players found their individualized bags of gear, with outfits carefully synchronized for each day. Nike's offerings included Duck-related garb from its basketball and skateboarding lines, along with a zip-up traveling suit whose pants appeared to end somewhere north of the ankle.



But the equipment managers' day was not over. As dusk fell, they headed north on Texas Highway 281 to Alamo Heights High, where they began preparing the locker room for Sunday morning's first practice.



-- Andrew Greif

agreif@oregonian.com

@andrewgreif