Are you the kind of person who gets to your gate five hours before your flight and checks that you still have your passport every few minutes just in case you forgot it at home? Well, you've got nothing on the New York Jets, who will be playing in London and consequently are spending a total of 65 hours across the pond. In order to avoid certain catastrophe, the team spent 11 months preparing for the trip — at one point even acquiring 350 rolls of toilet paper to bring along with them — because apparently the kind in England is too thin, The New York Times reports. (USA Today adds that this amounts to about five rolls per person for a single weekend.)
In all, the Jets are taking 5,000 different items on board with them when they travel — because what if they don't have cereal or gauze or extension cords in the U.K.? Additionally, every second of the trip has been meticulously rehearsed and prepared for, because herding football players is apparently akin to herding cats:
[Jets' senior manager of operations Aaron] Degerness learned which gate the plane would pull into, which door the team would exit and where the jet bridge would deposit the group. He also learned that when the Jets flew home, their walkway would meander past duty-free shops, and that worries him, if only a little."It's hard to tell the guys: 'Don't stop. Just keep walking,'" Degerness said. "Those are the things that keep us up at night — that we get through security, someone stops at duty free, and we leave Ryan Fitzpatrick because we didn't know he wasn't there." [The New York Times]
The next time you fly, just be thankful it isn't with the Jets. Read about the entire logistical nightmare over at The New York Times.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Florida erases rainbow crosswalk at Pulse nightclubSpeed Read The colorful crosswalk was outside the former LGBTQ nightclub where 49 people were killed in a 2016 shooting
-
Trump says Smithsonian too focused on slavery's illsSpeed Read The president would prefer the museum to highlight 'success,' 'brightness' and 'the future'
-
Trump to host Kennedy Honors for Kiss, StalloneSpeed Read Actor Sylvester Stallone and the glam-rock band Kiss were among those named as this year's inductees
-
White House seeks to bend Smithsonian to Trump's viewSpeed Read The Smithsonian Institution's 21 museums are under review to ensure their content aligns with the president's interpretation of American history
-
Charlamagne Tha God irks Trump with Epstein talkSpeed Read The radio host said the Jeffrey Epstein scandal could help 'traditional conservatives' take back the Republican Party
-
CBS cancels Colbert's 'Late Show'Speed Read 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' is ending next year
-
Shakespeare not an absent spouse, study proposesspeed read A letter fragment suggests that the Shakespeares lived together all along, says scholar Matthew Steggle
-
New Mexico to investigate death of Gene Hackman, wifespeed read The Oscar-winning actor and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead in their home with no signs of foul play
