Driving the UGA football team’s bus was the most nerve-wracking experience of my life

My first thought was, ‘Shit, I’m not qualified to drive UGA’s most precious cargo’

Have you ever been inconvenienced on the road by a couple of UGA buses just sitting in the street with their hazard lights on? Well, that was me driving one of those buses last Friday.

I checked my UGA Transit schedule the day before to find the words “Football Charter 12:45-4:45.” As it was the day before the UGA vs. UNC game at the Georgia Dome, my first thought was, “Shit, I’m not qualified to drive UGA’s most precious cargo to Atlanta – much less during a tropical storm and five o’clock traffic.”

To say I was distracted in class that day would be an accurate statement. I was constantly reassuring myself that surely they wouldn’t have scheduled me to do that if I wasn’t capable…right?

I was thanking my lucky stars when I reported to the campus transit facility for my shift on Friday to find that I was just driving a bus of UGA football players to practice out by the softball fields. No biggie, right? There were five of us driving buses because there are approximately 200 or so players on the team (and some of them are big guys, you know). I chose to be bus number four, so I wouldn’t be responsible for leading anyone in the wrong direction and wouldn’t get left behind.

We arrived at the Butts-Mehre Building (sounds a lot like “butt smear” if you ask me) and apparently they like to take their time, because the other drivers and I sat out in the street for over an hour waiting on these fellas. Having all this down time, I relaxed a lot, but I also got hot – I was lucky enough to get the bus with the broken AC.

The guys eventually came out and filed on, being pretty friendly and saying hello, etc. When my bus was maybe halfway full, my supervisor came over and asked if I had ever done a football charter before. My response was a nervous, “Eh, no.” He then told me how it was going to be.

When he said to get ready to go, I was to pull my parking brake and put it in drive. When he said to close the doors, I had to close them even if there was someone right there (he pointed to the sidewalk outside of the door) as long as I didn’t close them in the door. Then, when he said to go, I had to take off and stay as close to the bus in front of me as physically possible.

We had a police escort, so there was no stopping at stop signs or red lights, just driving until we got to the destination. “Got it?” he asked. He said all of that in about 12 seconds, so you can imagine the confusion on my face. I had thought we were just casually driving them to practice. No biggie, remember? Wrong. I did what I was told – luckily I didn’t have to close the door in anyone’s face – and we took off.

To be completely honest, I felt like a total badass. We were ignoring all traffic laws. My favorite part was seeing the looks on the faces of the poor souls around us as we weaved around cars, going maybe a little too fast. At one point, the police officer got out and yelled at a girl that got caught up in the confusion and was unknowingly reaping the benefits of the police escort. Rumor has it that she started crying.

The practice fields

I was very confident in my abilities the entire time, which is a bit surprising because there were a few moments when we were literally weaving the 40-foot buses through large trucks and nice Camaros on Milledge. The guys were enjoying themselves. Apparently, the police escort is not a common occurrence. When I found myself between a yellow Camaro and a hard place, I heard, “If you hit someone, UGA Football will pay for it.”

We got everyone to practice in one piece (and it only took us about six minutes while it probably would’ve taken more like 12-15 minutes otherwise) and we got to sit outside practice and observe from a short distance – which is pretty awesome considering the average student doesn’t get to watch the Dawgs play until it’s a Saturday in Athens at Sanford Stadium.

We had the police escort on the way back as well, but it was less eventful and the guys were a little less friendly considering it was post-practice and there was no AC. Nonetheless, it was a really cool experience – one I would never have had if I worked somewhere else on campus.

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