In a college football space that is on the verge of significant change for BYU, one transformation affecting other schools is not as drastic as it might have been for … yeah, BYU.
Travel.
The Cougars will cover more miles for road games in 2023 than all but one other Big 12 team, and that’s notable, considering the vast distances between some schools in that newly-expanded expansive league.
The number of miles BYU will travel, according to a study done by bookies.com, sits at 12,741. The Cougars play at Arkansas (non-league), at Kansas, at TCU, at Texas, at West Virginia, at Oklahoma State.
The only conference team scheduled to exceed that is UCF, which will traverse 14,914 miles. The Big 12 teams with the least amount of distance to travel are Kansas State (3,240 miles), TCU (3,588) and Texas (4,147).
Sides to the story to consider here are: 1) BYU is accustomed to covering long distances on roadies, going back to the old Mountain West days and through independence, and 2) what effect does stretched-out travel have on a college football team competitively speaking?
Any longtime Cougar observer remembers BYU’s regular trips to play in league locations that on the whole were farther away than most conference matchups in other leagues, spread out as schools in the West are, places such as … how about Honolulu? Mixed in with that were out-of-conference road games, wherever they were, the Cougars, ever trying to prove themselves, willing to play whoever, wherever. They played in varying seasons at Boston College, they played at Alabama, they played at Florida State, they played at Georgia Tech. They would have played on the surface of the moon if it would have advanced what they supposed their cause to be.
That trend continued into independence. In the past number of years, BYU played at places such as East Carolina, at Tennessee, at USF, at UMass, at Navy, and rather infamously at Coastal Carolina, at the drop of a helmet.
Last season alone, the Cougars traveled to Tampa, Eugene, Las Vegas, Lynchburg, Boise, Stanford, and Albuquerque for their bowl game. In just the 2022 regular season, BYU’s equipment truck traveled some 13,586 miles from Provo to those towns. The Cougars, indeed, know how to travel. And, as noted, they’ll have to know that heading into their new schedule mix in the Big 12.
Studies done on the effects travel has on teams’ competitive chances on the field are fogged over a bit by measuring travel against quality of a team in any given season and quality of opponent. But it is pretty clear that the combination of unfamiliar and often unfriendly environs, jet lag and fatigue do or, at a minimum, can put a drag on peak performance.
A couple of seasons ago, FiveThirtyEight analyzed travel distance data compiled by ESPN Stats for conference games over a 14-year period. Its conclusion, with room for some anomalies, was that the longer distance that was traveled for matchups, the more elusive the wins.
Some recent analysis, though, has indicated that roaming, traveling teams seem to be getting slightly better at winning road games. And that’s a positive, necessary thing, considering that college teams are traveling, in many cases, longer distances, driven as college football is by a thirst for exposure and the television money that comes with it.
That will certainly be the case in the modern iteration of the Big 12, a league that moving forward covers three time zones, the current far western end at Provo, Utah, the eastern end at Orlando, Fla.
