Red Eyes, Luggage Carts, Can't Lose

Just something quick: the Big East released its 2013 conference schedule yesterday. It's an interesting exercise in realignment madness. I computed the distance between each school using this tool. This first table provided the total miles each team travels to get to its road games, along with its longest trip.

School	Miles Traveled	Miles/Road Game	Longest Trip
SDSU	7166	1791.5	2500 (UConn)
Boise State	5801	1450.25	2114 (Temple)
Houston	5095	1273.75	1494 (Boise State)
Temple	4651	1162.75	2372 (SDSU)
Rutgers	3831	957.75	2146 (BSU)
Cincinnati	3626	906.5	1873 (SDSU)
Connecticut	3351	837.75	1487 (SMU)
UCF	3333	833.25	994 (SMU)
Louisville	3251	812.75	1625 (BSU)
Memphis	2978	744.5	1514 (BSU)
USF	2964	741	1101 (UConn)
SMU	2787	696.75	1152 (SDSU)

Some observations:

• It's no surprise that the top three are made up of conference newcomers. San Diego State, Boise State, and Houston, all rack up more than 5,000 miles in the air. Not surprisingly, the team based in San Diego has the longest trip in the conference called the Big East, traveling 2,500 miles to play UConn in Storrs. In fact, the Aztecs' shortest trip is 1,303 miles to face Houston, which itself is further than UCF, USF, and SMU's longest trips.
  
• On the other hand, newcomer SMU covers the smallest distance, at "only" 2,787 miles. For reference, that's still greater than the distance (one way) between SMU's home city of Dallas and Whitehorse, in the Yukon.

But if teams are exhausted from traveling to their road games, they can at least take solace in the fact that the opponents they face at home will be exhausted from traveling to them. Here's the same table, only this time with the distances each school's conference opponents travel to face them.

School	Miles Traveled	Miles/Home Game	Longest Trip
Boise State	6779	1694.75	2146 (Rutgers)
SDSU	6151	1537.75	2372 (Temple)
SMU	5076	1269	1487 (UConn)
Temple	4500	1125	2114 (BSU)
Connecticut	4448	1112	2500 (SDSU)
Louisville	3477	869.25	1799 (SDSU)
Memphis	3309	827.25	1564 (SDSU)
Cincinnati	3225	806.25	1666 (BSU)
USF	3126	781.5	947 (SMU)
Rutgers	3031	757.75	1409 (Houston)
UCF	2897	724.25	1037 (UConn)
Houston	2815	703.75	1303 (SDSU)

Once again, the teams from out west require the most travel: road games against Boise State, San Diego State, and SMU require the most time in the air. Interesting to note that Houston, near the top of the conference in terms of miles traveled, is last in the conference in opponent miles traveled: while the Cougars fly more than 10,000 miles to get to and from their road games, opponents need to travel just 5,600 to get to and from Houston.

I read an article about the challenges the NBA scheduler faced re-arranging the league schedule after last year's lockout. I remember thinking, "That sounds like a cool job."

Big East football scheduling? Not so much for some reason. Given the constraints of geography, it seems like someone will always end up getting screwed over. Don't get me wrong: I'm sure this is as close as possible to optimal, but that's what comes from an "eastern" conference spread across three time zones. Lots of travel means larger budgets, extra time away students spend out of class, bigger carbon footprints, you name it. And all so the Big East can drop down to "mid-major" designation in 2014. Yup, very rewarding.