LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham decided it would be best for the Sun Devils to depart for their game against Kansas in London this weekend immediately after their disappointing loss to Texas A&M on Saturday night.
Jayhawks coach Lance Leipold and his team waited until Tuesday before taking off from Topeka, Kansas.
The vastly different approaches to travel for Saturday's Union Jack Classic, the first college football game to be played at historic Wembley Stadium, in some ways mirror the approaches taken by the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams, who opened their NFL seasons by playing at the similarly historic Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia.
That worked out much better for one than the other.
The 49ers headed there early to acclimatize to the time change and scenery, while Rams coach Sean McVay waited until the last minute to bring his team Down Under. And while both coaches tried to downplay the effect their travel arrangements had on the performances, the 49ers nonetheless rolled to a 27-7 win over the Rams last Thursday night.
“I make no excuses,” McVay said afterward. “Whether you want to say it’s travel, whatever, we just weren’t good enough.”
There are differences, of course, between the Union Jack Classic and the NFL game.
The biggest one is this: Arizona State and Kansas are colleges, the Rams and 49ers are professional outfits. So while Dillingham and Leipold are both trying to treat the trip to London as a business affair, the coaches also want their players to have an experience that will stay with them long after they move onto the next chapter of their lives.
That's one reason Dillingham wanted to leave early. The Sun Devils had about 24 hours to tour the city this week before they got into their game-week routine, which Dillingham hopes will allow them to focus more as the game draws nearer.
“I want them to experience it right when we land,” he said. “Then let’s lock back in. We’ve got to go win a football game.”
The Jayhawks, coming off a disappointing loss to rival Missouri, put in their heavy workload on Monday and Tuesday in the comforts of their own practice facility. The team left later Tuesday, planned to arrive early Wednesday, check into its hotel — “Hopefully they are ready for us to check in,” Leipold said — and then hold a light workout before spending the evening taking in the sights.
Kansas also plans to sightsee after its normal Thursday practice, then hold a final walkthrough on Friday.
“We've had talks with people who study international travel, whether it's one way or the other,” said Leipold, who was a young graduate assistant at Wisconsin in 1993, when the Badgers traveled to Tokyo to play Michigan State in the Coca-Cola Classic.
Wisconsin won that game, 41-20.
“We kind of have guidelines on going to sleep, when we get there staying up, doing those things. It can mess with your body clock,” Leipold said. “It's well-documented what the Rams did going to Australia. We've talked to multiple people. Some say go really early, some say go really late. It's kind of a mixed bag of results, where it's at. But responding and going through and acclimating are definitely things we've talked about, and we'll have to on the way back.”
The quick acclimation wasn't a problem for Kansas State and Iowa State when the Big 12 took a game to Dublin, Ireland, last season, because it was their opener; the Wildcats and Cyclones weren't squeezing in a cross-the-ocean trip between games.
In the case of Kansas State, though, some blamed the return trip for a dismal start to the season that included a loss to Army.
“At the end of the day,” Dillingham said, “it’s a storyline if you let it become a storyline, if you let being on the road distract you, if you let the noise distract you, if you let traveling after this week distract you, if you let packing for a future game before this game distract you. Nobody cares. Let’s not let it distract us for the game. ”
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AP Sports Writer John Marshall contributed from Tempe, Arizona.
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