SEATTLE — Amid the chaos of packing up the University of Washington's football equipment room, there is a simple reminder written on the white board: don't forget the kicker's net. A few years ago, when the Huskies visited cross-state rival Washington State for a football game, somebody left behind this key piece of equipment the field goal kicker uses to warm up on the sideline before a big boot. Not this time.

The scene I got to see at Husky Stadium on Thursday, leading up to the weekend trip to Oregon's Autzen Stadium where the fifth-ranked Huskies will take on the Ducks, is logistical pandemonium. Managers pack a 51-foot semi with every imaginable item needed to support an entire football team. It's a scene that plays out across the nation every autumn weekend as pro and college football teams hit the road in trucks and trailers emblazoned with team logos, enduring middle fingers from opposing fans on the highway and making sure it all arrives in the right place before gameday.

The Huskies contract with a company called Air Van to haul their gameday gear, but driver Doug Hurley has turned into an honorary member of the equipment staff, knowing the ins and outs of everything in every trunk, what equipment is needed when, and who's in charge of it all. Who's in charge includes Husky equipment gurus Bart Fullmer and Jose Naguit, the two men responsible for making sure that nothing gets forgotten among the nearly three dozen trunks of gear.

Hurley gets "gets flipped off or waved at" as he barrels down the road in his colossal purple-and-black truck.

The Trunks

The two largest trunks in the truck hold shoes and cleats, with each having 100 assigned cubbies to store the kicks. The total number of trunks varies slightly from game to game, but usually it takes two or three dozen.

Trunks hold extra socks, that branded apparel the coaches have to wear, extra shoulder pads, extra helmets, and an array of under-pad gear, Naguit says. Every player will have a compression girdle with built-in padding and a short-sleeve Nike Dri-Fit top, but Naguit also brings long-sleeve Dri-Fit shirts and cold-weather gear that goes under the padding. You know, in case the weather takes a turn. The weekend forecast showed just a 1 percent chance of precipitation in Eugene, so some of the heaviest cold-weather stuff stayed in a box back in Seattle. But Naguit packed plenty of rain gear for coaches and players. You simply don't travel to Oregon without it.

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Four trunks contain cold-weather "capes"—another game-to-game variable. Typically Naguit loads two trunks. He says he'll bring all four when the Huskies visit Utah and Washington State later in the year. For the September Arizona trip, he packed one just in case.

Naguit has it all covered for the 70 players who make road trips for the Huskies, packing extra uniforms, gloves, cleats (most guys have just one pair of cleats they wear all season, but he has extras in case something goes wrong), three bags of balls for pre-game, and 12 game balls. Then there's the extra stuff, such as exercise bikes for the sideline, video equipment, strength and conditioning gear, training gear, garment racks for coaches to hang their clothes on in the locker room, and even garden rakes for quickly cleaning up the locker room after the game.

Apart from personal travel bags, each player packs a "player bag" with their helmet, shoulder pads, gloves, cleats, ankle or knee braces, and any lucky T-shirt they have to go under the pads. As the players turn in their bags, Husky equipment staffers check the contents to ensure the players didn't forget anything, then add in the gameday uniform before loading the truck. Player bags usually travel on the airplane, as players need most of the equipment for Thursday morning practice back at school.

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The Truck

Hurley doesn't stress about space. The cargo for the Oregon trip packs tighter than on some other journeys because he has 70 purple player bags (it's a short trip so he packed them up after Thursday practice), but there's still has plenty of room. The truck fills to the brim for bowl games, though, as the team needs to bring practice gear and more equipment for longer stays.

To make the process a roughly 90-minute affair, Washington staff stages the bulk of the trunks on the Husky Stadium concourse before the semi's arrival, allowing Hurley to start loading before practice wraps. He eyeballs the load, using his six years of loading Husky gear as his guide (some truckers across the country mark out spaces for certain trunks), loading the largest pieces first, such as the shoe trunks, and then filling in as he goes and roping down everything so his load doesn't shift.

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Once the trunks start filling the trailer, Hurley deftly maneuvers them like puzzle pieces, stacking them and using all the floor space. When space gets extra tight, he uses a special rack system built into the rig to construct a deck, allowing a second story of space.

The Trip

For a short jaunt like Seattle to Eugene—just 287 miles—Hurley took on Interstate 5 by himself. When trips run longer than 10 hours, like when the Huskies visit UCLA or Arizona State, two drivers will take shifts. (Hurley knows next year's 2,838-mile journey to Rutgers in New Jersey will eclipse any past Texas-based bowl game as his longest Husky haul).

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As you might expect, Hurley gets "gets flipped off or waved at" as he barrels down the road in his colossal purple-and-black truck, depending on whether the other drivers are Husky fans or not. He gets a lot of high-fives at rest stops. The experience is similar for the drivers of other football teams, as nearly every big-time college programs contracts with a trucking company to haul the gear, meaning nearly every team has a rig fully decorated in team colors.

For a Saturday game, Hurley times his trip to ensure a Thursday evening arrival. He makes his first Friday stop at 9 a.m. at the team hotel, dropping off water, Gatorade, and a few small trunks for the trainers and video team. From there he heads straight to the stadium to unload and often helps to set up the locker room for the team. Hurley says the toughest place in the Pac-12 to navigate is the University of California, where he's forced to unload on a hill and wheel trunks through Bear fans in Berkeley.

When it's time to head home, the staff has to do it all again. The re-loading of the truck happens in stages, with about half a dozen getting loaded at halftime and another dozen right after the game ends. Then comes the mad dash at the end of the game to get the truck on the return to Seattle with everything that it came with—including the kicker's net, which did make the trip this time.

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Follow Tim Newcomb on Twitter at @tdnewcomb.