One play, one stop. A kick and punt return -- or five lugnuts and four tires. Football, air gun.
The differences between NASCAR pit stops and the game of football are striking -- but according to former Virginia Tech place holder and current No. 11 gas man/engineer Caleb Hurd, the mentality is the same.
Tough.
"You can go out there and block a punt or something and spin the whole game around," Hurd said Aug. 19 at Bristol Motor Speedway, site of Saturday's Battle at Bristol between the Hokies and University of Tennessee. "So that's the way pit stops work. You can blow the race, you can help the race, you can be a non-factor … So the mentality is the same -- you just focus on your next job. Think small, don't think about the big picture because you don't have to.
"And you've just got to be mentally tough."
Mentally tough has been a mantra of Hurd's for two decades: He began his collegiate athletic career playing football under beloved head coach Frank Beamer at Tech from 1996-99. During that period, the Hokies went 37-11, making appearances at the Orange Bowl in 1996 and the national championship under the leadership of quarterback Michael Vick in the 1999 Sugar Bowl (played in 2000).
"My first year it was awesome to go to the Orange Bowl when I was a freshman because growing up, it was like the biggest thing in the world," the Pulaski, Virgina, native said. "We played Nebraska, who was just coming off a national title. So that was like an introduction to the big leagues a little bit.
"And of course, the national championship game, just to be a part of it, even though we didn't get to win. We were with Vick, we were leading in the fourth quarter … Just the crowd, the excitement … It was just a lot of fun. A lot of rings out of the deal, so that's cool."
Since moving into NASCAR full-time as an engineer and pit crew member in 2001, Hurd's ring collection has grown quite a bit: He started his racing endeavor interning with Hendrick Motorsports' engineering department as a college student. Upon graduation, he began working double-duty as an engineer and pit performer with Jimmie Johnson's newly formed crew and then Jeff Gordon's No. 24 crew before ultimately moving to Joe Gibbs Racing with 2016 Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin’s No. 11 car.
"I was kind of a local guy growing up near Virginia Tech so I just liked racing in general," Hurd said. "So that's why I went to Virginia Tech to get an engineering degree -- I didn't know if I would get in NASCAR, but that was my goal. And playing football, when they had the pit crew tryouts for Jimmie Johnson's team, it was an opportunity to stay on the sports side of the sport, versus just the engineering.
"It's kind of like being a scholar athlete still, I get to do my engineering job during the week and get to come out here on weekends and have a little fun going over the wall."
Hurd's entrance into the sport was interesting, as teams around that time were just starting to use pit crew members that were first athletes -- rather than shop mechanics who moonlighted as pit performers.
"(My first year) I was on a team with mechanics and stuff and I was the first kind of guy that did an athletic sport first and came in to do this," Hurd said. "Then, (I) was at Hendrick when the transition happened to just start recruiting these guys and train them to do pit stops.
"It's not like other sports where you learn it in high school and then college. You don't learn pit stops until you start doing pit stops. You have the athletic ability, but you definitely have to learn the craft to go along with it. If you can do both, you definitely have a big career ahead of you.
"But luckily the craft is so important to it, that's why some of us old guys are still around," Hurd said with a smile.
Hurd's worlds of NASCAR and college football will merge in a different light when the Battle at Bristol -- a face-off between Hurd's Hokies and the Tennessee Volunteers -- takes place at Bristol Motor Speedway on Sept. 10.
For someone who went from dressing in maroon and orange uniforms to putting on a fire suit each weekend, Hurd believes the gameday atmosphere will be similar to a NASCAR event at the Last Great Colosseum.
"I'm curious how much crowd noise can actually be generated," Hurd said of Bristol's deafening reputation. "I feel like it should be pretty loud, so I'm sure it will be. But when we get racing, we don't hear the crowd anymore -- it's usually blocked out at that point.
"… I'll be checking scores and crossing fingers."