How the NFL Game "Down Under" Has Turned Things Upside Down For 49ers & Rams I The Rich Eisen Show

The 49ers and Rams are playing in Melbourne, and the two teams could not have picked more different ways of getting there. The show spent a segment trying to make sense of the calendar, and nobody fully succeeded, including Kyle Shanahan.

First, good news. Tom Pelissero landed.

The 49ers were already in Australia. The Rams went the other route, and Rich read the itinerary as Joe Pompliano laid it out. Practice Tuesday morning. Leave for Melbourne Tuesday night. Wednesday is lost to the dateline, and the team lands Thursday morning. Kickoff is 10:35 a.m. Friday. Then the Rams fly back to the United States immediately after and arrive in Los Angeles midday Friday.

Those totals are absurd. The Rams will spend more than 30 hours on an airplane and travel over 15,000 miles, yet technically be back in Los Angeles less than 72 hours after leaving.

Rich also passed along a detail from Adam Schefter. Raheem Morris, traveling with the 49ers, missed his 50th birthday. He left on the night of Wednesday, September 2, and arrived on September 4. Thursday, September 3 never happened for him.

The table had fun with it. Is Morris really not 50? Does that mean he's always 49? One person announced plans to fly that way on every birthday from now on, like a leap year baby. Another pointed out that it fits, since the 49ers sign his checks. "Hey, he's 49 forever."

Then Rich played what he called the sound bite of the year already, Shanahan trying to explain his week.

"I look at my clock and it says the time, and then I try to see my family's time, and then it says the time but it says yesterday," Shanahan said. "I don't even get how that's possible. So I feel like I'm in the future."

It got better. The 49ers are creatures of habit, so Shanahan was calling the day of that press conference Wednesday, the first day of game plan installation, even though, as he put it, "I think it's Monday. However, though, it's Sunday in the present."

His full breakdown of the schedule ended with the game itself. "We play on Sunday, which is a Friday in Australia and a Thursday in the US. So don't ever make me do that again."

The reviews in the room were immediate. "That was amazing." "I have a migraine right now." Someone asked whether this was a space-time continuum situation.

Shanahan's mustache, the show noticed, is gone.

By the end, the crew had worked out the only logical conclusion about its own schedule. The show had done Overreaction Monday on a Tuesday, which meant, in Australia, it was Overreaction Tuesday on a Wednesday.

And with that, there was only one appropriate send-off to our friends down under. Throw another shrimp on. Football season is up and running.