Coast-to-coast Big Ten: How far do teams travel during the college football season?

Coast-to-coast Big Ten: How far do teams travel during the college football season?

The Big Ten is expanding in a big way in 2024.

On August 2, the conference officially added four West Coast universities: UCLA, USC, Washington and Oregon, and with that comes the expectation of additional travel.

The 14 Big Ten schools will have to travel to the Pacific Time Zone for conference games for the first time, and more importantly, the four former Pac-12 schools will make frequent trips to the Midwest.

Of course, with 18 teams, not everyone will play the same schedule every year, meaning there will be significant travel imbalances each season.

Here’s a closer look at which teams will travel the most and which will travel the least. A full breakdown, courtesy of Bookies.com, can be found here.

Of all the Big Ten teams, UCLA will travel by far the most in 2024. The Bruins will travel approximately 90% of the distance around the world, traveling 22,048.04 miles on six away trips and crossing 26 time zones.

A 5,000-plus mile trip to Hawaii certainly helps boost the total, but the same goes for trips to the Eastern time zone to face Penn State and Rutgers.

Washington, USC and Oregon take the next three spots with the most travel, while Rutgers has the most travel among non-expansion Big Ten teams with 9,278 miles and a trip from New Jersey to USC on the schedule.

Michigan State has the tenth longest travel distance at 6,770 miles, including a trip to Oregon.

Three-time defending champion Michigan received a nice travel draw, coming in 16th with 5,193 miles. A trip to Husky Stadium in Washington makes up the bulk of the trip.

Ohio State, the favorite to win the Big Ten, comes in at No. 15. OSU and Michigan are two of five Big Ten schools that make just four road trips. Both teams have just two road games before Nov. 1.

OSU’s round-trip flight to Oregon for its Oct. 12 game covers 4,107 miles, or 72.9% of the 5,633 miles it will travel during the entire regular season.

Indiana has the fewest miles this season at 4,894.88 miles. The Hoosiers make 4 trips and visit UCLA on September 14th.

The Big Ten’s longest scheduled away trip this year is USC’s visit to Maryland on October 19. The Trojans have a round-trip trip of 5,844.98 miles.

The shortest scheduled Big Ten trip is the annual USC-UCLA game. The Rose Bowl and LA Memorial Coliseum are only 12.29 miles apart.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *