There’s a new question on college kids’ minds this fall. And no it’s not “who will survive #BamaRush”? It’s how far they will have to go to play in (or cheer on) their college’s football teams.
Conference realignment has transformed who will be playing who, and who will be playing where, all for the benefit of the network executives fans. Due to this, football schedules have been reshuffled in an effort to have bigger name schools compete against each other during regular season. And while fans may be cheering on the change, the impact on players’ travel schedules is significant. This year, teams will travel further than ever before and be faced with navigating new airports and time zones.
Which school was most impacted?
We crunched the numbers to see just which power conference teams would be spending the most time in the air overall – as well as who was most impacted by the conference realignment.
When strictly looking at in-conference travel, NC State was impacted most with a 655% year over year change in miles traveled, followed by Georgia Tech (232% YoY), Cal (298%) and Wake Forest (272% YoY).
To no one’s surprise, UCLA (225% YoY), Stanford (191% YoY), Oregon (175% YoY) and Washington (166% YoY) will also be feeling the impact of traveling out east, while Iowa (154% YoY) will rack up the miles to get a nice view of the Pacific ocean,
Mile for mile, who’s traveling the most for their conference?
Washington will clock the most in-conference miles flown this football season (8,312), traveling more miles than Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Texas and Vanderbilt COMBINED.
Check out the full list of schools traveling the most in-conference this football season:
- Washington – 8,312 miles
- Cal – 8,254 miles
- Stanford – 7,051 miles
- UCLA – 6,878 miles
- Oregon – 6,241 miles
- Georgia Tech – 5,736 miles (3,920 of those miles will go to a game in Dublin)
- Florida State – 5,724 miles (4,111 of those miles will go to a game in Dublin)
- University of Miami – 5,275 miles
- Utah – 4,841 miles
- USC – 4,806 miles
- UCF – 4,769 miles
- Arizona – 4,669 miles
What about overall travel (both in-conference and out of conference)?
Reminder that while college teams will play most of their season games against other teams in their conference – they have the option to schedule the remainder of their season against teams outside of their conference to round out their schedule.
If we’re just looking at overall miles traveled for a full season of play, the list shuffles a bit:
- UCLA – 11,042 miles
- Cal – 10,347 miles
- Stanford – 8,980 miles
- Washington – 8,316 miles
- USC – 6,758 miles
- Florida State – 6,510 miles
- Oregon – 6,277 miles
- Miami – 5,759 miles
- Georgia Tech – 5,736 miles
- SMU – 5,659 miles
- Syracuse – 5,575 miles
- Arizona State – 4,914 miles
So no matter who you’re cheering for – raise a concession-stand glass to the teams working through their jet lag as they take the field. And if you’re looking to plan your own trip (regardless of whether or not it’s tied to a sports schedule), KAYAK for Students can help those with a student ID find deeper discounts on trips. Just in time for back-to-school.
KAYAK Software Company is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with the NCAA, the Football Subdivision Conferences, the named universities, football teams, or their respective subsidiaries and affiliates. Any related names or marks referenced in this content are registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Methodology
KAYAK used Google maps to measure distance from stadium to stadium to stadium to approximate miles traveled for each team
