I keep seeing people refer talk about the problems that adding west coast teams to an east coast conference causes.
Does it really matter that much? I'm sure schools and maybe even the conference as a whole negotiates travel rates with the airlines like every other big business in the US. If you fly a lot, you would know that distance doesn't necessarily make that much of a difference in the cost of a trip. I go to Arizona and California for work fairly often. My flights generally aren't that much more expensive than flying to closer locations. I can fly to Phoenix for about the same cost as I can fly to Florida. And for less than I can fly to Raleigh/Durham or Greenville, SC. The rest of the travel costs (ground transportation, food, lodging) are somewhat fixed with some regional differences.
Now I hear the "time" argument as well. The only real difference here is just a matter of a couple of hours per trip. The rest of the time it takes to fly (getting to airport, going through security, checking bags, boarding, etc) is fixed regardless of how far the flight is. And in some cases, some schools (Arizona State for instance) aren't that bad because the school is only 10 minutes from the airport. Stanford is around 25 minutes away. Beats an hour from Greenville to Clemson.
So, I guess my question here is, does travel really make that much of a difference when looking at expansion teams?
Does it really matter that much? I'm sure schools and maybe even the conference as a whole negotiates travel rates with the airlines like every other big business in the US. If you fly a lot, you would know that distance doesn't necessarily make that much of a difference in the cost of a trip. I go to Arizona and California for work fairly often. My flights generally aren't that much more expensive than flying to closer locations. I can fly to Phoenix for about the same cost as I can fly to Florida. And for less than I can fly to Raleigh/Durham or Greenville, SC. The rest of the travel costs (ground transportation, food, lodging) are somewhat fixed with some regional differences.
Now I hear the "time" argument as well. The only real difference here is just a matter of a couple of hours per trip. The rest of the time it takes to fly (getting to airport, going through security, checking bags, boarding, etc) is fixed regardless of how far the flight is. And in some cases, some schools (Arizona State for instance) aren't that bad because the school is only 10 minutes from the airport. Stanford is around 25 minutes away. Beats an hour from Greenville to Clemson.
So, I guess my question here is, does travel really make that much of a difference when looking at expansion teams?
