The Predictable Problem of College Sports Travel
THE PREDICTABLE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE SPORTS TRAVEL – Who didn’t see this coming?
We knew what was coming when the Big Ten invited UCLA and USC to join in 2022. Assuming that it wasn’t a joke, the Los Angeles schools were going to be on an island of their own making. Adding Oregon and Washington made things a little better, but there was still no way to get around the fact that four schools were going to force their way into a tough travel situation.
Things were even worse for Stanford and California. Cameron Brink certainly saw that coming. She notably jumped to the WNBA after last season and said point blank that she didn’t want to spend her senior season traveling across the country. Ditto for Tara VanDerveer, who retired rather than lead the Cardinal into the ACC. And now Stanford, once a hallmark of excellence in women’s college basketball, is in danger of missing the tournament.
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VanDerveer wasn’t the only coach who saw the issue. UCLA men’s coach Mick Cronin and USC men’s coach Eric Musselman have voiced their issues with the travel as the numbers have piled up. As both teams are coming to the end of the season, both coaches have seen the damage the travel has taken on their squads. Here’s a look.
Home Court Heroes
When I spoke to Big Ten football coaches in 2022 about this possibility, none seemed very concerned about it. And that’s because football plays one game a week. Teams aren’t adjusting their body clocks over a span of a couple of days. They’re taking a couple long trips a year, and they can plan to play one game after taking two or three days to recover.
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Basketball doesn’t work that way. The games come too fast and the conference setup doesn’t work like that. And the results are staggering. In the ACC, Stanford and California’s men’s teams have gone a combined 4-14 on the road in games not played against each other. They have a combined three road wins in the ACC: Cal beat NC State, Stanford beat North Carolina and Stanford beat Cal.
At home? The Bay Area schools have been great, going a combined 12-4. Home court is a big thing in college basketball, but the problem magnifies itself in a big way when you cross multiple time zones. It’s playing out exactly as expected.
USC is another great example. The Trojans pulled off a big home win over Michigan State. They also found a way to lose at Rutgers and are 0-4 in the Eastern Time Zone. The travel is really taking its toll.
Foolish Travel Schedules
I give the ACC and the Big Ten somewhat of a pass here. This was their first attempt to try to accommodate the West Coast teams. But some of these schedules made absolutely no sense.
Once, there was a time where Big Ten schedules were simple. You played twice a week in five pairs of two. Minnesota-Iowa. Wisconsin-Northwestern. Michigan-Michigan State. Illinois-Purdue. And Indiana-Ohio State. The week that you played your partner, you only had one game. The Pac-12 used a similar setup, pairing rivals together.
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The ACC and Big Ten tried, but sometimes just ignored logic and geography for whatever reason. Duke and Georgia Tech aren’t close, yet both Cal and Stanford played the Blue Devils and Yellow Jackets the same week. Pittsburgh and Clemson, same thing. There’s not a good way to handle every trip in the ACC, but some do make sense. The league showed it could get it right by pairing North Carolina and NC State on a trip; why not pair Duke with Wake Forest to cut down on travel?
In the Big Ten, Musselman lamented that his team had to play at Rutgers on a Sunday, then fly cross country to face Ohio State. Know where Ohio State was on Sunday? Playing at UCLA, which meant the Buckeyes were already in Los Angeles while the Trojans were in New Jersey. Volleyball was an even bigger offender, as the ACC sent Louisville out to the Bay Area to play Stanford…and not California. What was the point?
There’s a reason pro teams don’t do this more than twice a season, and when they do, they wipe out all of the teams in one geographic swing. You will never see a situation where an eastern NHL team goes out to California and doesn’t get the Ducks, Kings and Sharks all on one swing. It’s because crossing time zones matters. And the leagues aren’t getting it right outside of football.
How Can This Be Fixed?
The fix really is quite easy: football-only conferences. I would love a world where promotion and relegation is a thing for football, but that’s not likely. But it doesn’t have to be likely: we could have a world where schools have one league for football and another for every other sport. It’s not even a crazy idea, because it happens in other sports. In men’s soccer, for example, Kentucky, South Carolina and West Virginia all compete in the Sun Belt Conference because nobody else in the SEC or the Big 12 offers the sport. Notre Dame plays Big Ten hockey, is independent in football and competes in the ACC for everything else.
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In a world where football is separate, other sports could set up leagues that make sense. Pittsburgh, West Virginia and Penn State could compete in an all-sports league with other northeastern schools, not all of whom play football. Looking at WVU specifically, five of the Mountaineers’ 10 biggest crowds in men’s basketball history came against Pittsburgh, Marshall or Syracuse. The only Big 12 game in the top 10 was a 2016 game with Oklahoma where both schools were top-10 ranked. Mountaineer fans don’t care about facing Arizona State or Texas Tech, and they’re far from unique. Fan bases want to play nearby schools.
Letting football go would allow the one sport equipped to handle the travel the chance to chase those dollars. Then we could get back to basketball, baseball and volleyball games that matter.
