Is Clemson doing Stanford’s laundry? Explaining unique ACC football travel situation
A few weeks ago, Stanford football equipment manager Greg Valenzisi reached out to his counterpart at Clemson with a question.
Could the Tigers possibly do their Week 5 opponent’s laundry?
Yes, really.
Stanford, which is based in California, was coming up on its busiest two-week stretch yet as a first-year ACC member. The Cardinal were set to play back-to-back ACC road games on the East Coast: At Syracuse on Friday, Sept. 20 in central New York, and at Clemson on Saturday, Sept. 28 in Upstate South Carolina.
Stanford’s schedule was decided in January, so this wasn’t a surprise. But two East Coast road games in the span of eight days were still presenting some logistical challenges for a program that spent over 100 years competing against primarily West Coast schools in the Pac-12 before agreeing to join the ACC last fall as its former conference nearly dissolved amid a major round of conference realignment.
One of them was equipment.
Stanford was driving a massive truck full of gear to Syracuse, New York, but it didn’t make any sense for that truck to turn around and drive another 41 hours and 2,800 miles back to California with another East Coast trip just days away.
Plus, Valenzisi said he was told by others at Stanford there might be a plane weight issue if he flew Stanford’s full repertoire of jerseys, helmets and gear back in full.
The issue appeared to stem from a shorter airport runway at Syracuse Hancock International Airport, which has a 9,014-foot runway. (A spokeswoman for South Carolina’s Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport, where Stanford is flying into this week, clarified that the airport’s runway is “one of the longest in the Southeast” at 11,001 feet and can accommodate any size of aircraft.)
That plane weight concern removed the option of flying everything back to Stanford after the Syracuse game … and left Valenzisi with a lot of dirty laundry.
Thus, Valenzisi’s question to Clemson director of football equipment Nick Yarid: Would Yarid and his Tigers staff be willing to pitch in?
“Without hesitation, Nick said he would help with whatever we needed,” Valenzisi told The State on Monday via email.
Is Clemson doing Stanford’s laundry?
In a classy moment between new conference colleagues, Valenzisi said he and Yarid put a plan in place for the Tigers to help clean Stanford’s used equipment (free of charge) after the Syracuse game and before their Sept. 28 meeting.
Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney publicly revealed the news during his postgame news conference Saturday after the No. 21 Tigers beat N.C. State.
“I think their truck’s coming down from there and we’re going to do some of their laundry,” Swinney said, laughing. “There you go — 2024 — so, a lot’s going on.”
On Monday, though, Valenzisi said those plans had changed — in a good way. By shedding some excess gear, he and the Stanford equipment staff found a way to cut down the overall weight of their equipment so it was safe enough to ultimately be transported on the team plane back from Syracuse to Stanford last week.
The end result: Stanford’s team flew to Syracuse, the equipment bus still drove to New York and the team had everything it needed equipment-wise during a thrilling road win against the Orange last Friday, the Cardinal’s first ever in ACC play.
From there, coach Troy Taylor’s program flew back to Stanford as planned, while a few equipment staffers stayed behind with the truck. (The team opted to return home between the Syracuse and Clemson games since the Syracuse game was on a Friday and provided them with an extra travel day, The AP previously reported.)
On the return flight to Stanford, all of the equipment came back with the team and was washed on campus. It’ll be on the team plane again Thursday, when Stanford is scheduled to fly into GSP for the Clemson game, according to a team spokesman.
So, as things currently stand, “I won’t need the Clemson equipment staff to do any laundry that I’m aware of,” Valenzisi said.
There is a chance Stanford has a few lingering items that need washing or cleaning on its truck that stayed behind, and Clemson can help out there. Valenzisi said he won’t have a full read on the equipment situation until he flies to South Carolina later this week and checks in at the team hotel with the staffers who drove the program’s large equipment truck down from Syracuse to Clemson. (That group split up a roughly 13-hour, 856-mile drive by spending a few nights in Virginia.)
“The plan was in place for Clemson to help,” he said, “a request they granted without hesitation. But plans change. I know Nick is there to help with anything I need.”
A sign of ‘brotherhood’
After Swinney publicly mentioned Clemson’s plans to help Stanford with its laundry on Saturday, fans on X (formerly Twitter) praised the decision as a classy moment.
With Stanford, Cal (Pac-12) and SMU (AAC) competing in the ACC for the first time this season — and other conferences, especially the Big Ten, spread out coast to coast — such handshake deals seem like they’ll only become more common.
“I guess they reached out to operations or our equipment staff and said, ‘Hey, can you guys help us out here?’ ” Swinney said Sunday during his weekly teleconference. “So, glad to do that and help facilitate. I mean, that’s a long way to go. … And if we ever had to do that, hopefully, somebody would help us out as well.”
Even though Valenzisi and his equipment staff were able to fly their laundry back and clean it in Stanford under an altered plan, he said Clemson’s willingness to help out was a great example of “the brotherhood that college football creates.”
“For us in the trenches, when you get asked these things from your counterparts, you ask yourself what you would do if you were in the other guys’ shoes,” he said via email. “Almost always, we go above and beyond for each other.”
“So thankful to work with such great people all across the country that will give you the shirt off your back if asked.”
Next Clemson game
Who: Stanford (2-1, 1-0 ACC) at No. 17 Clemson (2-1, 1-0 ACC)
When: 7 p.m. Saturday
Where: Memorial Stadium in Clemson
TV: ESPN
Line: Clemson by 21.5 points
This story was originally published September 23, 2024 at 3:31 PM with the headline "Is Clemson doing Stanford’s laundry? Explaining unique ACC football travel situation."
