ASU Football: Learning to Travel

It may sound silly, but football teams need to learn how to travel.  Young teams especially need to figure it out.

Thursday night, a young Arizona Wildcat team almost learned the hard way how to prepare for a road game by escaping with a 7 point win over Texas-San Antonio.

Most people scoff at the notion of “learning how to play on the road”.  Fair enough.  But remember these are young college kids.  Many of them come from humble homes and have never really traveled before.  Literally, they’ve never been to another state.  Some of them have little or no experience being on an airplane.  Some of them are new to (and uncomfortable with) sleeping in a hotel.

The point is that it can be a distraction for a young group of players.

Then factor in how it interrupts the routine.  Most players are creatures of habit.  They have a mental and physical routine to prepare for the game.  Playing on the road can prohibit that ritual for new guys.  The veterans will have to show the newcomers how to make things work on the road.

Now you mix in a hostile crowd at a game that is not a “hyped” game with conference relevance and its easy to see how young players could get distracted.  This is where leadership comes in.  Of course, as always at the college level, it starts with the head coach and his assistants.  But in reality, it comes from the veteran players.  When new/young players see accomplished veterans like Jaelon Strong, Jaxon Hood, Taylor Kelly and DJ Foster approach a road game in a certain way, they will quickly follow suit.

This particular road game also has the added bonus of facing a team that runs an unorthodox offense in the triple option.  It’s an offense that will absolutely punish a defense that is not focused.

Here’s to hoping that the leadership of this ASU team will step up and show some real maturity and bring their “A” game in Albuquerque.