Delayed flights, NFL advice and epic rants: How traveling in expanded conferences is impacting teams

After UCLA started 0-3 in Big Ten road games outside the Pacific time zone, coach Mick Cronin unleashed a legendary rant last month on the logistical imbalance faced by the league’s four new West Coast members, lamenting that his team had “seen the Statue of Liberty twice in the last three weeks.”

“Oh, the Big Ten teams get to come to Los Angeles, where it’s 70 degrees, one time a year?” he said, scoffing at the relatively light travel faced by the league’s traditional 14 members, all of whom are clustered in the Central and Eastern time zones.

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David Cobb

The Bruins (19-8, 10-6 Big Ten) are 3-0 in Big Ten road games played in the Pacific time zone but just 1-4 in all others after finally picking up an Eastern time zone win at Indiana last Friday. Still ahead is a two-game swing to face Purdue and Northwestern.

“Ask me UCLA’s record east of the Mississippi in the last 20 years,” Cronin said during his rant, which you can watch below. “Because when I got the job, I looked it up for scheduling purposes. It’s below .500.”

Prior to the 2023-24 season, no school in a high-major conference was more than one time zone away from its furthest conference neighbor. Then came the realignment bomb, which started incrementally last season with the Big 12’s addition of a Mountain time zone team in BYU and two more EST teams in UCF and Cincinnati.

That officially marked the beginning of significant time-zone travel (at least two) within high-major college basketball. The trend has taken full effect with the 2024-25 season. Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington are now in the Big Ten; Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah are in the Big 12. Wonkiest of all, Cal, Stanford and SMU are now in the ACC, which was previously comprised exclusively of EST teams.

“This travel is something I’ve never experienced, even at the NBA level,” Cal coach Mark Madsen said on an ACC media teleconference last week. “This is more intensive travel than even when I was a player at the Lakers or a coach at the Lakers.”

ACC teams suffering the most

Within the ACC, the jet-setting appears to be taking its toll. Entering this week’s action, teams were 6-22 in games of at least two time zones away from home. Of those 22 losses, 14 of them have been incurred by Cal and Stanford. The PST members are a combined 2-14 in ACC road games in the Central or Eastern time zones.

Those traveling to play the Bears or Cardinal, in turn, are just 4-8. Miami went 0-2 on its four-day road trip to Stanford and Cal last month — at 2,500 miles, it’s the furthest distance between opponents in the ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten this season.

The data also suggests there is a hangover effect for those returning home after a West Coast trip. ACC schools are just 1-7 in home games immediately following trips to play Cal and Stanford. 

Among them is Wake Forest, which is the only ACC team to sweep both Cal and Stanford on the road. However, the victorious vibes of a Saturday win at Cal earlier this month hit a snag for the Demon Deacons when an issue popped up with their scheduled flight home. 

Coach Steve Forbes phoned a connection who arranged a private plane big enough to carry a portion of Wake Forest’s traveling party. The eight players and four coaches on that flight got back to campus around dinnertime on Sunday and went straight to the practice facility for a walkthrough focused on Florida State, who was the team’s next opponent. 

The rest of the traveling party got back early Monday morning. Forbes noted it “worked out” but “wasn’t ideal,” especially for the late-arriving members of the program.

Forbes gave his travel-weary team Monday off before the Demon Deacons returned to practice Tuesday in advance of the Wednesday game against Florida State. Ultimately, they squandered a 16-point second-half lead and fell 72-70 against the Seminoles in an outcome that could haunt Wake Forest on Selection Sunday.

“All these guys want to play in the NBA, and in the NBA, they travel constantly,” Forbes told reporters after the FSU loss.

“We’ve prided ourselves on being a team that doesn’t let travel affect us,” he added. “We had this game in our hands, and we didn’t finish. And it’s going to cost us.”

One important caveat in the ACC scheduling breakdown is that Duke, Clemson and Louisville — the top-three teams in the league standings — all avoid the West Coast swing in 2024-25.

Navigating a new challenge

Forbes and other ACC coaches have been hesitant to make travel-related excuses for poor performance in their public remarks. But it’s clear that the disruption of cross-country travel for conference games is a wrinkle they are still learning to navigate.

“We’re going to master the travel,” said Madsen at Cal. “We’re going to thrive with the travel. But you have to be smart with the volume of travel and games placed on these players, because on top of the basketball, they’re doing academics. And so these guys, they have a lot on their plate.”

Cal had one particularly frustrating travel snafu after an 0-2 trip to play Pitt and Clemson in early January. The Bears ended up sitting in a bus at an airport for a couple of hours after their loss to the Tigers before a plane could be re-routed to South Carolina in order to carry the Bears home on an all-night flight.

“We are literally taking these young men across the country almost every other week,” Madsen said. “Now, I love it. We are in the best basketball conference in the world. You’re playing against great teams. It pushes us to be our best. You know, we’re pushing the teams we’re playing against. So it’s phenomenal. But I got to figure out this travel better.”

One suggestion Madsen presented would be to model how NBA teams travel, often racking up 3-5 games per cross-country trip instead of routinely flying cross-country to play just one or two games.

By the regular season’s end, Cal (12-14, 5-10 ACC) will have made seven trips to the Central or Eastern time zones, including five during ACC play. If the Bears finish among the top-15 in the standings of the 18-team league, they’ll make yet another trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, for the ACC Tournament.

“I would love to bunch it up,” Madsen said. “Let’s get four games in one trip. Let’s get three games in a trip.”

Madsen also suggested early tip times on Saturday that would allow the West Coast teams to return home at a reasonable hour Saturday night.

Asking the NFL

While realignment-created travel appears to have hit the ACC hardest, it’s added a new wrinkle for coaches across the country.

USC is 2-3 in Big Ten road games played two time zones away and is facing a cross-country trip this week to EST to play Maryland and Rutgers.

First-year Trojans coach Eric Musselman said in an appearance on the Bret Boone podcast last week that he consulted with the Los Angeles Rams before the season on how they handle travel east. Among the feedback he got was that it can take three days for your body to “catch up” when traveling three time zones.

“It’s so hard to go to sleep the first and second night when you’re on West Coast time,” Musselman said.

It’s a stark contrast, he noted, from where he coached previously in the SEC with Arkansas, where all teams still remain separated by a maximum of one time zone.

The Trojans have been arriving one day before their Big Ten road games for now. But USC planned to arrive two days early for this week’s game at Maryland, which will be its furthest trip yet.

“It’s kind of going to be a year or two, experimenting, talking to other teams and seeing what’s best,” he said.