Utah’s trip to Waco, Texas, this week serves as a Big 12 appetizer.
But it only takes one look at a map to realize that travel is going to be different — and more challenging — for the Utes and college football fans everywhere starting next year.
“It’s going to be terrible,” Tom Aiello, a Valdosta State history professor and author of several sports books, told The Associated Press in the wake of the latest realignments. “College football was built on rivalry games, and regional rivalries at that. And those regional rivalries were largely built on some kind of personal issue. And all that goes away in these kind of manufactured conferences that they’re creating.”
Just how different will travel be?
Inspired by college football reporter Brett McMurphy’s travel docket for Arizona State’s new schedule, I thought I’d do the same with Utah’s. For each opponent in the Pac-12 and Big 12, I calculated how long it would take to travel between Rice-Eccles Stadium and that college’s football stadium in two different ways — by air or by car.
For drive time, it was a relatively straightforward lookup in Google Maps from place to place.
Air travel calculations got a little more complicated: I first noted the 23 minutes it takes to get from Rice-Eccles Stadium to Salt Lake City International Airport, then looked up real commercial flight times from SLC to the nearest major airport near an opponent’s college. Finally, I added the distance it takes to drive from that airport to the team’s stadium. I decided not to include any in-airport time for walking or security, taking into account that Utah’s sports teams sometimes use charter flights, so feel free to add that to the totals below if desired.
Average travel distance for Pac-12 vs. Big 12
Let’s look at the overall picture first.
The average drive time from Rice-Eccles Stadium to a Pac-12 stadium is about 11.5 hours. The average drive to a Big 12 stadium, meanwhile, is 20 hours and 24 minutes.
There’s a significant difference in flight times, too, albeit a smaller one. It’s about 2 hours and 50 minutes to get from stadium to stadium while using a commercial jet in between in the Pac-12, and about 3 hours and 50 minutes in the Big 12.
How much farther is it to drive to each Big 12 school?
Let’s now look at each school individually.
Yes, there’s one school much closer to Utah in the Big 12: BYU. But other than the three schools that are moving to the Big 12 with Utah, every school in the Big 12 is farther away than even the longest Pac-12 drive, to the home of the Oregon State Beavers in Corvallis, Ore.
It takes about 24 hours to drive from Salt Lake City to Cincinnati; about 28 hours to drive to Morgantown, home of West Virginia University; and a whopping 34 hours to drive to Orlando, where the University of Central Florida is located.
How far fans will go to see their favorite team depends on the situation, said David Tyler, an associate professor at UMass and an expert in sports rivalries.
“There is a limit in terms of the distance that people can travel for these,” Tyler said. “But when they’re traveling for games, it’s typically about the experience when they’re traveling those big distances. It’s about the experience and the camaraderie and the other people more than the game itself.”
Pro tip: Take a flight.
How much farther is it to fly to each Big 12 school?
How about flight times?
Of the new opponents Utah will face in the Big 12, Texas Tech will be the easiest for the Utes’ charter flight to reach, thanks to a quick flight from SLC to Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport. But for fans, there’s no airline that flies directly from SLC to Lubbock, meaning a time-sucking layover.
Next up would be either a matchup against Kansas or TCU. For games against the Jayhawks, fans fly to Kansas City, then drive about 50 minutes to Manhattan, Kansas. TCU’s Amon G. Carter Stadium is about a half-hour drive from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Meanwhile, West Virginia is actually the farthest trek for Utah fans. The easiest way is to fly into Pittsburgh, a 3-hour, 50-minute flight, then drive 1 hour and 16 minutes to Morgantown.
While a core group of fans will be willing to travel a certain distance, games requiring that much more time on a plane will hurt attendance, Tyler said. “That’s when you’ll really see those diehards not willing to travel to those games.”
The first few years of realignment shouldn’t make a difference, according to two experts in sports rivalries. Joe Cobbs, a professor at Northern Kentucky, said there initially will be a “novelty effect” for traveling fans. Cody Havard, an associate professor in sport commerce at the University of Memphis, calls it the “honeymoon stage.”
“Like if you’re a big Indiana Hoosiers fan, you might say, oh, this would be great to go and see a game at Oregon. What a great opportunity,” Cobbs said. “But, you know, the third, fourth time that they play in Oregon, are those fans still going to want to make that trip if they’ve already made it?”
Flight costs from Salt Lake City to Big 12 cities
I was also curious: How much more will these longer flights cost Utah fans as they trek elsewhere to support the Utes?
Luckily, the U.S. Department of Transportation keeps track of average U.S. plane fares from city to city on a quarterly basis. The last quarter that they’ve released data for is the first quarter of 2023. These are average one-way fares, and also include more expensive first-class tickets.
In the Pac-12, it was pretty cheap to fly to Denver, Phoenix, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. Flights to smaller airports like Tucson and Spokane got a little more expensive, though.
Big 12 flights are generally more expensive, which makes sense because they’re longer.
The Pac-12 one-way flight fare average was $219.
The Big 12 average was $277.
That means it was about $60 more expensive, though it will be interesting to see if demand for boarding passes to Big 12 destinations skews the market during football season come 2024.
Overall, it’s a significant difference between the two conferences for athletes and fans alike. Being in either group just got a bit harder in 2024.
– The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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