All hands on deck for USC Trojans

Mark Hucek may be the only local business manager who will make money by catering exclusively to the cardinal-and-gold crowd this weekend.

But the University of Southern California Trojans need a place to stay on this, the opening weekend of the Cavaliers’ football season.

And that’s where the Doubletree Hotel Charlottesville, the area’s largest hotel, comes in.

The Albemarle County hotel fills its 235 rooms often, Hucek said, so his staff is used to handling being completely booked — like this weekend — but he met with employees around 9 a.m. Thursday for a

final run through.

“We’ve had more denials this week, because I don’t have the rooms, since I’ve been here,” Hucek said afterwards. “There’s just so much hype around this game.”

At around 11 a.m. Gaye Tuel was fielding guest questions at the front desk that was dotted by grapefruit-sized USC helmets.

Tuel is a Charlottesville native who has worked the hotel’s college football crowds for the last four years. She’s also worked as a game usher at Scott Stadium for the last 11 years.

“A lot of people think, ‘Oh no, the team,’ but they’re pretty quiet,” Tuel said.

Even so, the hotel was buzzing in the hours before the team showed up.

As bell captain Graham von Schill walked along one floor of the hotel, he passed close to a dozen staffers, many doing housekeeping, with one woman feverously polishing a chrome, folding luggage rack.

At the time, Schill was walking to Pete Carroll’s room, where he left a bottle of red wine for the USC head coach that Schill was told came from University of Virginia head coach Al Groh.

But before the wine, Schill spent the morning driving back and forth to the airport dropping off guests and then back out to a local party supply store, where he picked up dozens of gold and red helium balloons.

But as he went to take a late lunch, he found there weren’t enough balloons. So back out he went … but not before snapping on a latex glove and clearing the mulch around the front entrance of cigarette butts.

It’s all part of the pre-game show. Not the least of which is the $4 million oil change the welcome wagon underwent over the last year in which all of the hotel’s rooms and public spaces were renovated.

The hotel held an open house to show off the renovations Tuesday.

Around 4 p.m. Thursday some hotel staffers had changed from their regular work gear into black USC shirts with “Win Forever” printed on the front and “Genuine Muscle Milk” on the back.

Hucek anticipated staf-fers wearing USC colors on Saturday would undergo a changing of the garb after the No. 3-ranked Trojans leave with their police escort for the stadium.

“We want to be cordial to the team, but we all live here, so we’re really Wahoo fans,” Hucek said.