Penn State Sports Magazine
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4 8 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 2 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M I t might feel like a distant memory, but there was a time not so long ago when it seemed that all the pressure on major-college sports conferences was to be less sprawling. Whether because of pandemic- induced austerity or the likelihood that air travel was going to be much more difficult for the foreseeable future, the conventional wisdom a few years ago held that college conferences would not be able to continue sending 20 or 30 var- sity teams hundreds or even thousands of miles from campus to play regular- season games. In the age of COVID, it seemed preposterous to think that col- lege athletics, as an institution, could continue doing business as usual. So much for the conventional wisdom. With the blockbuster announcement in June that USC and UCLA were about to be added, the Big Ten became the na- tion's first bicoastal conference. The two new schools are set to begin Big Ten competition in 2024. When that happens, the distance between the league's two most distant schools — Rut- gers in the East and UCLA in the West — will be 2,797 miles. To put that number in perspective, when Penn State joined the conference in the early 1990s, the distance between its farthest outposts — PSU in the East and Minnesota in the West — was 972 miles. Before PSU's admission, the longest road trip in the Big Ten was between Ohio State and Minnesota, with 726 miles separating the two schools. The 2,570-mile distance between State College and Los Angeles will pose challenges for every Penn State team that has to compete on the West Coast. Foot- ball is the sport that arouses the most interest among fans, and the three-hour time difference between the Eastern and Pacific time zones matters, particularly during the regular season when teams don't have the luxury of arriving days or weeks ahead of time like they do for bowl trips. Penn State is 4-6 all time in reg- ular-season road games against Pac-12 opponents, while Pac-12 teams are 3-11 in Beaver Stadium. Still, football teams play once a week. The travel difficulties for men's and women's basketball and the Olympic sports — teams that in most cases play more than once per week — are going to be even greater. Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said in July that he's mindful of the diffi- culties student-athletes will have to bear as they crisscross the country. "Fortunately, I grew up in a household of educators," he said. "My father was a student-athlete at Arizona State. He was a college professor at Arizona State. My mother was a schoolteacher and librar- ian. Academics are incredibly important to [wife] Greta, to me, to my family, to what I do on a daily basis. It's something I take very seriously. "Because of that, I always think through the issues or the problems, but also, what are the opportunities now that we are across four time zones, now that we'll have schools in 2024 that will reach from New York, New Jersey, to Los Angeles? What are the different cultural elements in each one of those environ- ments, not only in the cities, but with their alumni, that could even fortify our educational relationship with our student-athletes?" Warren cited Northwestern's game against Nebraska, which will take place in Dublin on Aug. 27, as an example of how long-distance travel can have an ed- ucational component. There's no doubt those teams will be getting a cultural experience they wouldn't have gotten otherwise, just as Penn State did in 2014 when it opened its season against UCF in the Croke Park Classic. But unless the Big Ten plans on invit- ing the University of Limerick and Trin- ity College Dublin in its next round of expansion, the trip to Ireland is going to be a one-off. The visits to Los Angeles will be recurring. Even if the Big Ten is able to finesse its scheduling models in ways that mini- mize the inevitable academic disrup- tions for athletes who may play 30 or 40 games in a typical season, the mileage is going to create more stress for athletes who are already traveling long distances to compete. Right now, the longest Big Ten road trip that PSU athletes must make is 1,075 miles. Soon, it will be more than twice that length. A 2021 study by Bowling Green profes- sor Amanda L. Paule-Koba found that the majority of athletes surveyed "felt the travel had a negative impact on their athletic performance, academics, and personal relationships." The Big Ten and NCAA are already tracking academic performance, and we're all tracking athletic results, but student-athletes' personal well-being is not so easily quantified. Warren admit- ted it's a concern. "We've done a lot," he said, "but this is something I think about every day, that we can do even more." There's no choice but to do more, because there doesn't appear to be any turning back from the path that the Big Ten and SEC are now on. If a global pan- demic couldn't stop the consolidation of the Power Five into a bigger, wealthier, more omnivorous Power Two, it's hard to imagine what would. ■ Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren has hailed the edu- cational opportunities that the conference's westward expansion will open up in the years to come. PHOTO BY GREG PICKEL The Big Ten Is Hoping That Travel Broadens The Mind VARSITY VIEWS E D I T O R I A L MATT HERB MATT.HERB@ON3.COM