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There are plenty of logistical issues you need to contend with when you’re playing a college football game across the Atlantic Ocean. Iowa State had to grapple with that reality ahead of this weekend’s showdown against Kansas State in Dublin, and its packing list included some condiments the team knew would be hard to track down in Ireland.
Harvard was technically involved in the first college football game that was held outside the United States when it headed up to Canada to face off against McGill in 1874. However, it took more than 60 years for two American teams to play each other on foreign soil—a box that Auburn and Villanova checked when they played to a 7-7 tie in Havana, Cuba in 1937.
Japan and Australia were eventually added to the list of international hosts, and in 1988, Ireland became the first European country to get in on the action when Boston College beat Army in the inaugural edition of what was initially dubbed the “Emerald Isle Classic.”
That long-running showcase has since been rebranded as the Aer Lingus College Football Classic, and Iowa State and Kansas State will be participating in it for the first time when they meet in Dublin on Saturday.
That marks the first time the Cyclones will be playing outside of the United States (the Wildcats lost to Nebraska in Tokyo in 1992), and the team subsequently got a crash course in the challenges of preparing for a game overseas while putting together a packing list that includes some unexpected items.
Iowa State shipped bottles of Frank’s Red Hot and Sweet Baby Ray’s to Ireland to give players a taste of home
The Des Moines Register got to take a peek behind the curtain while chatting with an equipment manager who was tasked with ensuring Iowa State has everything it needs in a game that will be played close to 4,000 miles away from Ames.
You might think there’s some incentive to pack lightly given that distance, but the team actually decided to err on the side of caution to make sure it’s not scrambling to find vital supplies that may literally not exist in Ireland upon their arrival in the country.
Greg “Skip” Brabenec, the team’s chief of staff, says the airplane that ferried the gear was packed with 10,000 pounds worth of equipment that was meticulously logged in a spreadsheet that spans 1,083 lines. That includes obvious essentials like jerseys, pads, and headsets, but as the outlet notes, there was also some space reserved for “Frank’s Red Hot Sauce and Sweet Baby Ray’s barbeque sauce,” which are presumably fairly rare commodities in Ireland.