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We're not in SoCal anymore, UCLA football players will have to remind themselves this college football season, as it's been reported by SI.com that their team will be traveling approximately 22,134 miles roundtrip to their six road games. Mileage wise, that amounts to 89% of the way around the Earth. If that seems like a ridiculous commute for a public state school's travel schedule, it's probably because… it is.
If UCLA fans weren't already missing the Pac-12 after the controversial power conference realignment, they certainly will be now. In the Bruins first season in the Big Ten, they will be traveling farther than any other team in the power conferences. The school with the next longest travel schedule is the Bruins' NorCal rival UC Berkeley (also known as Cal), which in its first year in the ACC will log approximately 20,720 miles.
The entire circumference of the earth is 24,901 miles, so UCLA is almost ninety percent of the way to full circumnavigation (mileage wise).
This is the whole issue Pac-12 fans had with the realignment in the first place. The Pac-12 featured teams from California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, all in the western United States.
Now these SoCal kids will have to criss-cross the entire country multiple times a year to play teams nowhere near the Pacific — like Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nebraska.
Granted, starting the season by going to Hawaii and LSU has them really racking up the frequent flier miles to begin with. Then couple that with trips to Penn State (4,498 miles), Rutgers (4,856 miles), Nebraska (2,538 miles) and Washington (1,918 miles) and the Bruins are looking at some serious free travel rewards miles.
Falling just 2,767 miles short of navigating the globe is a little extreme — especially when you consider the fact that many of the UCLA players' families are from California, and now they can't just hop in the car for a few hours to watch their kids play on the weekend.
But that's the reality when you disband a 109 year old conference. There's gonna be some growing pains, for the players, schools and the fans.
Also, Big Ten, hate to break it to you, but with the additions of UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington, you now have a total of eighteen teams, so it might be time for a name change. If Big Eighteen doesn't have quite the same ring to it, maybe consider going with something like the Big As [BLEEP] Ten. It's about as classy as the money grab that led to this massive conference realignment in the first place.
