After Oregon football announced its conference matchups for 2024 through 2028, one thing that stood out was the road trip distance. This season, the team will travel 4,509 miles to play games on the road. Next season, all of that changes.
Oregon’s 2024 conference road trip distance is 12,618 miles with just one one-way flight to UCLA being less than 1,000 miles.
And that’s the same for all Pac-12 schools joining the Ducks in the new conference. Washington will travel 16,573 miles over the course of the 2024 conference season. Both Los Angeles schools will each travel over 15,000 miles for their inaugural seasons.
Part of the reason for the long travels is because the Big Ten eliminated the East and West divisions starting in 2024. Instead of the best teams from each division facing each other in the conference championship game, the top two schools with the best conference records at the end of the season will play each other.
The conference elected to continue the nine conference game format through a Flex Protect Plus model. The model features a “combination of protected opponents and rotating opponents” to where each team will play “every other conference opponent at least twice — home and away — in a four year period,” according to the statement the Big Ten released.
When the Big Ten added the four Pac-12 schools, they faced some scheduling challenges when creating a fair and reasonable schedule. The Flex Protect Plus program includes 11 protected rivalry games including University of Michigan-Ohio State University, Michigan-Michigan State University, UCLA-USC and Oregon-Washington, too.
“Divisions are very difficult to balance because they’d have to be large,” Tony Petitti, the Big Ten commissioner, told The Athletic. “And secondly, if you’re playing nine conference games and you’re breaking into divisions, you’re playing so much against your own division that you’re not really crossing over. The inability to see other teams and really connect with the conference is not ideal. So, there’s a competitive aspect to it, but there’s also a lot of practicality.”
To be fair, the Big Ten has less than a year to fully prepare for its new members to join the league, which means there is less than a year to nail down cross-country travel and logistics in all of the sponsored sports. But in the interview with The Athletic, the practicality of the new system wasn’t explained.
Oregon now has to build infrastructure to accommodate its new network. It is being forced to invest in more resources for academics, nutrition and mental health. It’s great that the athletes will have this, but at what cost?
Travel alone isn’t the new concern, but the length of the trips in the aggregate is.
Without the divisions, travel schedules vary each year, causing inconsistency for the athletes for practice schedules, planning accommodations with professors and rest for their bodies and mental health.
UCLA announced that by the time the school is officially in the Big Ten, every athlete on campus will have breakfast and lunch made by nutritionists and dieticians served to them to make sure they are being fueled properly. All athletes were gifted noise-canceling headphones and Wi-Fi hot spots to do homework on planes on top of increased staffing for mental health and academic support.
USC has been putting a lot of effort into its sports science research and learning how to best optimize its athletes’ nutrition and sleep. USC has also been in contact with professional sports teams based on the West Coast who consistently travel across the country.
Oregon hasn’t publicized its plan to prepare athletes for the conference switch, but it’s likely to be similar to what the two Los Angeles schools are doing.
This new model eliminates division imbalance, which leads to title game blowouts that the Big Ten usually sees — three of the past 11 Big Ten Championships have been decided by single digits — and removes annual games that don’t need to be played. There’s a more robust schedule rotation and the opportunity to play in every Big Ten venue before graduation.
However, it doesn’t seem as practical as Petitti said. It seems like a great business decision for TV deals, ticket sales and investment for the fans watching from home, but what about the athletes? You can prepare for an opponent as much as possible, but long plane rides take a toll on your body. Stress from missing class and a lack of sleep also takes a toll on your body. Being in the right space physically and mentally can change the outcome of a game. For a team that has to travel from Eugene to Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana, next season, this new system doesn’t seem pragmatic.
