TAMPA, Fla. — As soon as the Good Greek Moving & Storage moving truck backs up, the choreography begins. Like a well oiled machine, getting the Tampa Bay Bucs packed up for a road trip takes a village.
Good Greek Moving & Storage owner Spero Georgedakis takes pride in being the official mover of the team.
“On Sundays, we turn on the TV and we watch the football game,” Spero said. “But how did the helmets and shoulder pads really get there? Well, this is it.”
It starts as soon as the truck is in place at the Bucs training facility’s loading dock. Bins of equipment are wheeled out of their storage location. They are numbered and contain everything the Bucs will need on game day.
One by one, they are rolled onto the truck and fit into place like a game of Tetris. There is a place for everything and everything has a place on the truck. Before his company began moving sports teams across the country, Spero had no idea what was entailed when getting a team ready for a road trip.
“We have to make all this fit, right, and the only way to do that is methodically and there is a process,” he said. “There is zero margin for error when it comes to an NFL team like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.”
Overseeing the operation for the Bucs is Brad Berlin. This is Berlin’s eighth season as the Bucs equipment manager. He’s responsible for a lot on game day. And especially for road trips, he’s got to make sure everything the team needs is on this truck. Because there was an incident a couple of years ago when something got left behind.
“We got to Indianapolis and we didn’t have any telecommunications equipment because the person that was responsible for getting it on the truck at the stadium after the last home game didn’t quite work out that way,” Berlin said.
The numbered systems helps ensure that that won’t happen again. It’s a lot of responsibility to be in charge of everything a professional football team needs to play the game.
So much of the work goes on behind the scenes. So when you see those road games on Sundays, just know it took a small army to make sure the Bucs can just play.
“I was surprised on Day 1, but that was 15 years ago when I first started handling professional team moves,” Spero said. “Now, hey, this is just what we do.”