CHAMPAIGN — Faces change, the coaches and players come and go, but the laundry never stops.

That’s your motto if you’re an equipment manager working more than 50 hours a week for the University of Illinois football team.

That’s your motto if Trent Chesnut is your boss, because that’s his motto.

Seventeen years into his job as the Illini's head equipment manager, Chesnut, 49, works 12-hour days for much of the season. He has a face tanned by years in summer sun, a back he’s tweaked multiple times while hauling around practice equipment and a bad right ear from his time in charge of piping crowd noise into practice. Otherwise, Chesnut is a low-key guy with a soft central Illinois twang and the build of an athlete whose best playing days were in his teens. He’s not interested in personal celebrity.

“This job is not about pay or praise,” he says. “There’s no lull.”

Chesnut enters the bowels of Memorial Stadium at 7:30 most mornings during the fall, and that was no different on the final Tuesday of September, five days before the Illini play at Nebraska. He begins his day by folding towels.

The equipment room is a windowless expanse of shelves, benches and tables adjacent to the team’s locker room and shower area. It’s brimming with boxes of gear, shoes, shirts and hats. It’s the kind of operation that requires a heavy-duty label maker, lots of packing tape and a good memory. And it’s best run by a leader who is working his dream job.

His journey

Chesnut grew up in Hoopeston, and despite being just as close to Purdue’s West Lafayette as he was to Champaign, firmly latched onto the Illini as his team of choice. He attended his first game in 1973, at age 6, and even now, driving around the stadium in a golf cart, he looks up at the stands with a childlike appreciation.

“Either Illinois or the (Chicago) Bears,” were the two jobs Chesnut says he always wanted.

He was a high school buddy of Thad Matta, long before Matta became Ohio State men’s basketball coach, and got into equipment management when he headed to Southern Illinois University for college. At SIU, Matta was set to play basketball and Chesnut was set to be a basketball student manager, but when Matta left after one season, Chesnut stayed.

Upon graduation, Chesnut wrote to “everybody” in the equipment management business. He eventually netted two offers, one from the Detroit Tigers to help during spring training with no guarantee past Opening Day, and the other from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas as an assistant equipment manager.

So Chesnut and his wife, a Carbondale native, loaded up a Ryder truck and went west of the Mississippi River for the first time.

Three years passed in Las Vegas and another eight years went by in Reno at the University of Nevada, where he served as the athletic department's head equipment coordinator. Then Chesnut got hired at Illinois and returned home.

For the last 16-plus years, he has washed every piece of clothing imaginable, along with a few million towels. Along the way, he got divorced, got engaged again and saw his son Jacob graduate from Illinois.

Jacob works as an equipment management intern with the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars and was one of Chesnut’s student managers while an undergraduate. The father talks about the son a lot.

“I miss him; I can’t wait for him to come home,” Chesnut says while tapping out an email. “We talk and text a lot, though.”

Chesnut is a big memento guy. He has the locker room sign from the 2008 Rose Bowl behind his desk and Illini memorabilia scattered around his desk, next to photos of Janet, his fiancée, and Jacob. In the main portion of the equipment room, he has helmets from all 32 NFL teams. Alumni who return to the stadium sign them, and the collection includes a front-and-center Denver Broncos helmet with Howard Griffith’s scrawl across the logo.

The other main visual feature of Chesnut’s workspace is the line of dozens of NCAA helmets ordered neatly on shelves close to the ceiling. Every year, on one wall, he sets up the helmets of Illinois’ opponents in order. He takes the helmets down week by week and features the upcoming opponent’s lid on a pedestal close to the locker room, confronting anyone who enters. It’s a tradition that was in place when Chesnut arrived in Champaign. He likes it, so he kept it.

His team

About 20 minutes after Chesnut’s arrival, Clint Miller pops in the door. Miller, 24, is a native of Champaign and one of Chesnut’s homegrown assistants — Chesnut says “it’s clutch” having assistants who have come up through his student manager ranks. Miller heads straight to a cart of freshly washed towels and goes to work. Fold, flip, pat down, repeat. Miller’s motions are a perfect imitation of Chesnut’s.

“You’re only as good as your people,” Chesnut says.

About this time, 8:45, Chesnut receives the scout team list for the week. The players had Monday off, so scout team numbers are assigned Tuesday. Those chosen for the scout team must forgo their usual practice jersey number and wear the assigned number of an opposing player. The offense wears the color of the team’s game uniforms that week.

“We want Wes Lunt throwing to guys in white jerseys; I guess it’s a mental thing,” Chesnut says with a shrug.

This means in addition to linebacker Hardy Nickerson’s No. 10 jersey, he must dig out an additional blue No. 10. But the only one he has is a 3XL, far too large for freshman defensive back Evan Jones, who will don it come practice time. Jones’ 6-foot-2-inch, 190-pound frame might barely fill out an XL, let alone a triple-X.

“He’s not going to be happy,” Chesnut says.

Intern Nate Blackburn is next to arrive, rolling in at 9:30 while Chesnut and Miller are moving out the travel trunks. Blackburn is a 2016 graduate of Illinois working as Chesnut’s intern after serving as an undergraduate team manager.

Before a road game, the equipment gang loads up an 18-wheeler with gear and off it goes, usually on Thursday for a Saturday game.

Miller and Blackburn take off to tackle more laundry — workout clothes this time — while Chesnut sets up the trunk used for game cleats in the center of the locker room. When Chesnut gets the shoes from players, he scrubs them with a towel and rubbing alcohol and sprays the insoles with Clear Gear, a cleaning spray that counts former Illini and Super Bowl champion David Diehl among its major investors. The work reminds Chesnut of working in his grandparents’ bowling alley in Hoopeston and cleaning the shoes with disinfectant.

Spritz. Spritz. Spritz.

“Nate Echard doesn’t even look like he’s worn these yet.”

The bowling alley is no longer there. It burned down in the 1980s after Chesnut’s grandfather sold it. The new owner replaced the burnt-out building with a garage for 18-wheelers like the one Trent is packing with gear to go to Nebraska.

Not all the shoes will get sprayed and packed today. He leaves the trunk in the middle of the locker room for Miller to work on later and heads back into the equipment room.

By now it’s 11. And that means the fellow the players call “Johnny Birdman” has arrived.

John Birdsell began his career as a night watchman at the stadium in 1983 and joined the equipment staff two years later. He got married in the stadium’s varsity room, with the Marching Illini along for musical accompaniment.

Birdsell is the group’s precision man, responsible for sewing the cloth name patches onto jerseys and detailing the helmets for game day. He’s also unofficially responsible for telling stories, including one that starts with “Do you know which bathrooms in the Big Ten have urinals built into the showers?”

Chesnut’s student managers will traipse into the room hours later. They’re his surrogate nephews, a chattering bunch constantly ribbing each other, mostly about their fantasy football league.

But next up on Chesnut’s schedule is a trip on the Gator utility vehicle to move around practice equipment.

His memories

While driving across Zuppke Field, Chesnut describes how open the equipment room once was. In his first seasons on the job, players used to hang out in there.

“(Kurt) Kittner, (Luke) Butkus, (Tony) Pashos were around all the time,” he says. “You get to know those guys.”

Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman was a part of that group.

“The equipment room was the social hub,” Whitman said. “It was the place everyone knew they could go, and Trent was the host. It’s always been that way; a warm and welcoming place where current players, former players could gather.”

Chesnut repeats often that his favorite parts of the job are the relationships. He has more stories about former players and coaches than there is time to tell them.

Ron Zook didn’t bother Chesnut with many special requests because he was “just a ball coach.”

Tim Beckman “was a micro-manager” and “set the program back.” Chesnut still has the ropes sitting around from when Beckman roped off a Block “I” in the middle of the locker room.

And what does Chesnut think of Whitman? “No one has more passion for the place than Whit.”

At Whitman’s introductory press conference, it was Chesnut and football faculty representative Matthew Wheeler who presented Whitman with a No. 87 jersey — his old number — to welcome him back to campus. Seeing Chesnut with his jersey was a moment Whitman said he’d never forget.

The college kids weren’t the only ones to lounge around Chesnut’s space. In 2002, when the Bears played at Memorial Stadium, Chris Chandler, at times Chicago’s third quarterback, spent one game drinking beers on Chesnut’s couch. Because it was Sunday, the Illinois equipment staff was busy cleaning up from the night before, so they weaved around Chandler, doing laundry, while he drank and the Bears lost.

Current players are no longer allowed in the equipment room, because Chesnut has to keep a precise accounting of the gear, and the players sometimes filched small items — a pad, a glove, a shoe — without asking an equipment manager.

So while Chesnut fiddles with the shoe trunk in the locker room, long snapper Michael Martin watches him, and when Chesnut mentions the idea of new facilities, the senior snorts.

“Trent just wants new shiny stuff,” Martin quips with a wicked grin.

Martin’s not wrong; Chesnut does want a new space. He works with the smallest laundry facilities in the Big Ten: two washers and two dryers for 108 players and more than 50 support staff.

At the moment though, he’s focused on the game shoes and solicits pairs from passing players.

“Malik, can I get your shoes?”

“Tito! I need your shoes, Tito.”

“Hey Jamal, go get me your game shoes.”

His life

Since Chesnut is in charge of the practice equipment and student managers, who run much of practices’ minute details, head coach Lovie Smith consults with him every day. Today, their meeting takes place on the grass practice fields next to Memorial Stadium

“How about this field for offense and this one for defense?” Smith asks. “We can put the specialists over here and do indie (individual drills) over here.”

Chesnut nods.

“I was thinking that half field would work, too, for the tight ends,” he says.

That works for Smith, who thanks his equipment manager and slowly strides off the field.

“In person, he’s a lot like you see him on TV, during a game,” Chesnut says. “Quiet, very, very even-keeled.”

And now that the practice fields are done, it’s back inside for more Nebraska packing.

The good news is that the pre-practice laundry is done. Chesnut, Miller and Blackburn continue packing the trunks: two white jerseys for each player, a pair of game pants, socks and mesh bags with sweatbands and girdles.

“Always overpack, always overpack,” Chesnut says.

The packing won’t be finished today; players are already filing past the door, heading out toward the practice field. After practice, Chesnut will be back in the laundry room, preparing for the next day.

Ironically, practice might be the closest thing to a break he’ll get all day. His only duties are running the clock and blowing the airhorn to signal the ends of practice periods.

The players are mostly all outside, and Chesnut is grabbing his hat and sunglasses to join them.

A voice drifts from the door to the locker room.

“Trent? My jersey’s too big.”

Remember Evan Jones?

“Sorry man that’s all I have. Tape it to your pads,” Chesnut replies.

You can email Peter at pbaileywells@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @pbaileywells