Via HuskerHeadlines on Twitter: “Tom Osborne – travel within the Big10 will not be an issue.”
When the ACC expanded in 2004 by adding Miami and Virginia Tech, and then in 2005 when they added Boston College, the average distance between the schools ballooned from 323 to 484. The average distance between Pac 10 schools, the most dispersed group of the BCS conferences (before realignment began), was 731 miles.
Nebraska’s average travel distance in the Big 12 sat at 485 miles. Now it will be an average of 628 miles from its new brothers in the Big 10, but that figure is skewed because of the 1000+ miles it will have to travel to Penn State games. Take out the distance between Lincoln and State College and that average distance drops to 582, hardly an increase that would be a road block to switching conferences.
Given the enhancement that Nebraska will see in its coffers by joining the Big 10, having to travel an average of 100 miles more to away games is no issue at all.
Travel is only a consideration for the minor sports..Football and basketball are irrelevant to this discussion. Baseball is on the margin..leaning towards a money loser in most cases rather than a net producer.
The real issue will be the Title IX sports welfare teams in the future…How many women’s golf and volleyball teams can a league support..? And to what end? These should all be club type sports that afford women the opportunity to play in an area..not regional…level. Softball is in
that category also..and certainly women’s basketball. Only a handful of those programs support themselves.
As Greg says, travel costs are an issue for non-revenue sports. But I think that using simply an average of miles is not a good measure of the increased costs ….. the marginal costs of time and $$$ driving 200 vs. 300 miles are not very great, but once you have to put your team on a plane, the marginal costs shoot up.