(08-09-2023 12:06 PM)Purple Wrote:  

(08-09-2023 08:29 AM)Duke Dawg Wrote:  

(08-09-2023 08:09 AM)AssyrianDuke Wrote:  ACC will soon stand for All Coasts Conference? (EDIT: Damn, JMad beat me to it. Great minds and all that )

This realignment money chase has passed from silly to sad. What sort of college experience do these kids get if they're going to spend the whole athletic season travelling? I felt FOMO when I would go home for a weekend, and that was only an hour and a half away! Can't imagine if I had to travel from Columbus to Eugene, OR and Seattle, WA, or vice versa. It still seems like the easiest solution to this would be to split football from the other sports so football based decisions (like, you know, waves arms frantically all this!) would be done in a vacuum and not impact softball, basketball, swimming, etc. Actually the easiest solution would be for the NCAA to tell conferences, "No, this is stupid, you ain't doing this" but they seem too busy trying to make sure kids don't earn any NIL money or a cut of the profits from TV deals that are forcing them to travel from Columbus to Eugene or Seattle. Short-sighted and misguided management from top to bottom from a bunch of "fail upwards" types. Man, it's 9 AM and I need a drink...

I think the travel hardships for the athletes is being overblown.

they are getting to play a college sport, with amazing facilities and resources (the p4 schools provide that for ALL its athletes) and many might actually like to travel and see the whole country while they are young and on someone else's dime.

for all that might not like it, there are plenty more who are actually enjoying it.
How many times would an Ohio State athlete from somewhere in the Midwest get to go to Seattle? And it's not like they are doing that every weekend. It's maybe a couple times a year.

this is more of a fan issue. A fan of Ohio State has no history or any real opinion about Washington more than likely. It's just another opponent.

A UCLA fan (are there any left?) will never care as much about Iowa as they would Arizona.

that is who loses in these changes. the fans. The athletes will be fine.

Here's what I have never understood about travel hardships on student athletes. Transnational flights are two or three hours longer than regional flights and players mostly sleep or chill on the plane the whole way.

But, if a team is proposing joining a cross-country conference, some fans start screaming about travel costs and hardship. It's a couple of hours chill time difference and not a great difference in cost. Often, short flights cost as much or more than longer flights.

Travel time and the cost of travel are givens….but what you haven’t addressed is the extended time away from classes on extra long trips that are the primary concerns. Meeting APR requirements will become an increasingly bigger issue.