Congratulations to you, Wake Forest football coach Jim Grobe, and to your players and staff. You're going to the Seattle Bowl!

Condolences to you, Wake Forest equipment manager Demetrius Gibson. You're going to the. . .Seattle Bowl.

"That's a long way to move 7,000 pounds of equipment," Gibson says.

He's not complaining. Gibson would rather deal with the logistical nightmare of getting 3½ tons of football gear to a bowl game than the alternative, which is not going to a bowl game at all. But Seattle?

"We'll get it all there," Gibson says. "No problem."

He hopes. Funky things have been known to happen to football equipment on the way from here to there. Gibson has heard some of the stories, like the one at Florida State. "Didn't they have all their stuff burned?" he asks.

Pretty much. On the way home from a 1995 football game against North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the Seminoles' equipment truck caught fire -- torching nearly all of their road uniforms and equipment.

That's the exception and not the rule, of course. Usually a college team's equipment is as safe as the money in your neighborhood bank. Of course, banks do get robbed. . .and so do equipment trucks. In another FSU adventure in Chapel Hill earlier this year, the Seminoles' baseball truck was robbed of more than $7,000 in equipment in the parking lot of the team hotel while the players slept. The next day, the No. 1-ranked FSU baseball team had to play the Tar Heels while using and wearing some UNC equipment.

Wake Forest doesn't have to worry about misadventure happening to its truck en route to Seattle. That's because the truck isn't going that far.

"We're allowed a certain number of pounds on the plane, and I think we'll get all of our equipment on there without having to truck it," says Wake Forest athletics director Ron Wellman. "Trucking it up there would not be pleasant. Sending a couple guys across the country on a truck with football equipment is not what we want."

No, the Wake Forest equipment truck only has to get the Deacons' gear from the football facility to the local airport. As far as Gibson is concerned, the most difficult part is getting all 7,000 pounds packed up into containers and onto the truck.

Think about it. Say you're flying to Seattle for the holidays -- you, your spouse, and the kids. Say you're going to spend a week there, and you've got no idea how much the weather might change along the way. It would take a while to pack, no?

Now imagine packing for about 100 college football players, many of them weighing more than 300 pounds, all of them needing gear for a week of practice and then a nationally televised game. Don't forget the 60 footballs, inflated. And you better include the cold-weather gear, too. Just in case.

"I'd rather bring too much than not enough," Gibson says. "It takes longer to pack, but you've got to have everything. I don't want to be one of those stories you hear about."

Like the UCLA band truck, which had more than $20,000 in equipment stolen in 2000. Or the North Carolina football truck -- what is it with the Tar Heels and equipment trucks, anyway? -- which was broken into by Duke fans before their 1998 football game and "decorated," according to reports. Nobody will say what "decorated" means, and frankly, do we really want to know?

Gibson didn't know what to expect from a trip to Seattle, so he called someone who did. He called the equipment people at Georgia Tech, which played in the 2001 Seattle Bowl, for a little intra-ACC advice.

"It put my mind to rest," Gibson says. "It sounds like it went well."

But what if it doesn't go well? What if the airline loses some gear? Or if the bus from the Seattle airport to the team's practice facility gets lost? Or. . .

"Sorry," Gibson says. "I don't have any more time. I've got to start packing."

Gregg Doyel covers college football for The Charlotte Observer and can be reached at gdoyel@charlotteobserver.com.