Georgia linebacker Dannell Ellerbe was hoping the Bulldogs would depart on Thursday for its trip to Arizona State for a Saturday game that is slated to kick off at 8:15 p.m.

That's not happening. The Bulldogs are sticking close to their regular travel routine despite taking their longest regular-season road trip in decades.

"Oh, man, that's going to be hard," Ellerbe said. "We're going to go over there and be three hours behind. I would just like to get over there on Thursday and have a little Thursday practice and get caught up on Friday, have a day under our belt. We've just got to go out there and play. It doesn't matter what day we leave."

The team will fly out of Atlanta on Friday afternoon on a chartered plane to Arizona.

"We're staying on our exact same schedule," director of football operations Steve Greer said. "We're not doing anything different."

That means leaving Athens around 2 1/2 hours prior to takeoff. The team must still check their bags at the Atlanta airport, but it will be allowed to pull its buses onto the tarmac before an airport security check. Uga VII will also be on the plane along with his owners, the Seiler family, according to associate athletic director Arthur Johnson.

The Bulldogs won't travel much more than the 70 players that they bring for SEC road games. The pep band will fly separately on a commercial flight.

Coach Mark Richt made the decision to leave Friday after director of sports medicine Ron Courson spoke to representatives from other schools that played in Arizona and determined there wasn't a benefit of going an extra day early.

"Ron felt like everybody he talked to didn't feel like another day there would acclimatize the team to the type of temperature and humidity level," Richt said. "I didn't want to bring the team there an extra day too early just to get too anxious and just to get bored out of their minds. Plus, we would have had to miss class."

Richt even considered flying the day of the game, stretching and then playing.

"I felt like the best thing for us is try and stay in a normal rhythm of a normal away game," he said.

It's hard to argue with that considering Georgia is 26-4 in opponents' home stadiums under Richt. But Georgia hasn't played a nonconference road game west of the Mississippi River since losing to Houston, 15-14, in 1967.

"My best advice for anybody doing that would be just to double-check all of the little details," said New Mexico State coach Hal Mumme, whose team played at Nebraska on Saturday and still has road games at Texas El-Paso, Nevada, Idaho, Fresno State and Utah State. "Things tend to snowball time-wise."

When Mumme coached at Kentucky, the Wildcats' nonconference games included bus trips to Louisville and Indiana.

"I've never been on a trip this far, so I might have a little jet lag," defensive end Jeremy Lomax said. "It's not going to be an excuse as far as how we're going to play."

Georgia senior athletic administrators will arrive Thursday when they play golf and meet with donors. There's an alumni function with president Michael Adams at the Royal Palms Resort in Phoenix.

Georgia's team will board a charter plane to Atlanta right after the game and should get back to Athens around 7 a.m. Sunday.

Fresno State coach Pat Hill already traveled across the country when his team beat Rutgers on Sept. 1., but it had an open date the next week. His team travels to Ohio this week for a Saturday 8:15 p.m. game at Toledo.

"We won't get back until 3, 4, 5 in the morning on Sunday and we've got a road game the following week out in L.A. against UCLA," Hill said. "We'll need to get our players caught up on their rest. Where it gets hard is the coaching staff."

Hill said breakdowns of UCLA film will be ready by the time the team returns so they can begin game preparation.

Georgia will have a similarly quick turnaround for No. 9 Alabama on Sept. 27.

"I really want the coaches to get back and start doing their thing on the filmwork on their end," Lomax said. "I think the players will be ready."

Reach Marc Weiszer at marc.weiszer@athensonline.com.