I'm sitting here in the NFL newsroom watching the replay of Sunday's game between the Atlanta Falcons and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Certainly one of the weekend's better matchups and improved by the work of color analyst Charles Davis. Strange thing though: Unless I'm going nuts, Davis also called Saturday's UCLA-Stanford tilt, which unfolded one day prior and 2,500 miles away.
So what gives?
NFL Network's Davis -- who also broadcasts college and pro football for FOX -- is currently embarked on a nationwide voyage that will carry him thousands of miles to 15-plus cities in just over two weeks.
Davis is a busy man during football season, but this past week -- beginning just hours after Thanksgiving dinner with the wife and kids -- has been frantic. Take a gander at his schedule below:
By our calculations, Davis will cover 14,030 miles between Nov. 23 and Dec. 6. He'll call the Big Ten and Pac-12 championships, hit the College Football Hall of Fame and pick the brain of countless NCAA coaches and players along the way.
Davis opened the trip Saturday by zipping from his home in Orlando to LA for the UCLA-Stanford affair, then back to Orlando hours later on a red-eye -- plus 160-mile drive to Tampa -- for Sunday's Bucs-Falcons tilt. The Florida return was a last-second favor to fellow broadcaster Brian Billick.
"Brian threw his back out and, so, everything changed a little bit," Davis told Around the League. "The rest of it? All planned."
Hectic? Of course, but here's the upside: Davis rolls with two-million-plus frequent flyer miles on Delta. His take on the middle seat? "Not if I can help it," he said.
"I like to make (the plane) my office. I take paperwork and tape it to the seat in front of me, so I don't have to shift things around," Davis said. "I take depth charts and then tape them to the back of the seat in front of me.
"It works. I'm sure some people are like, 'Oh, he wants to tell us what he's doing,' but that has nothing to do with it. For a while I thought, maybe I shouldn't do it anymore, but you know something? I gotta get my job done."
Davis made it a point to thank the many people who work to compile research and slap together travel arrangements as he hops from one location to the next.
At the front of that list, his wife and two kids, who are used to Davis' schedule and still get a kick out of seeing Davis on television -- and at home, where he plans to return after this epic trek is wrapped.
Follow Charles Davis on Twitter @CFD22. Follow Marc Sessler @MarcSesslerNFL.
