Problematic issues facing the B1G are distances teams will have to travel to face all four Pac-12 defectors and vise versa, we’ll have a lot of miles to travel as well in the coming years.
New Big Ten members Oregon, Washington, UCLA and USC will travel far starting in 2024 but only three times in 2024 according to league officials.
The Big Ten is expanding, and with the addition to the conference, adding Oregon and Washington will have a ripple effect on future scheduling. In June, the Big Ten announced the schedule for the 2024 season, which included new members USC and UCLA. Now, with the Ducks and Huskies departing the Pac-12 after this season, the schedule makers will be forced to rework what they thought was a finalized schedule.
No other conference in major college football will require certain members to make true cross-country road trips unless the ACC adds more schools. With four Pac-12 schools joining the Big 10 next summer, it’s likely every school will have to make at least one trip out West in 2024. In the original schedule, Maryland, Rutgers, Penn State, Michigan State, Indiana and Purdue all avoided a trip to either USC or UCLA that season.
All six of those schools would’ve had to travel less than 5,000 miles round trip for conference games. For context, USC was scheduled to travel over 16,000 miles roundtrip in 2024 because of road games against Maryland, Penn State and Purdue. UCLA had conference road games scheduled against Rutgers, Michigan and Indiana, plus nonconference road games against Hawaii and LSU.
This type of travel is unusual within other Power Five conferences, even with expansion. BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF debut in the Big 12 this fall. Provo, Utah, to Orlando, Florida, now becomes the furthest distance traveled between two Big 12 members — at least for now until we see what happens with Arizona, Arizona State and Utah. Still, it’s about 1,100 miles less roundtrip than what USC and UCLA will have to endure during conference play.
Admittedly these distances are terrible for College Football but these GAMES are once a week with the three or four games scheduled as an away game schedule in conference. Now consider other sports that play more often, say Basketball. The student athelete will be on the road twice as much, all in the name of higher profile games with more money in TV revenue. THANKS LARRY SCOTT for screwing up the PAC 12 forever!
