Texas A&M's Move to SEC is Not a Huge Deal For Traveling Fans
By Ty Duffy
The Big Ten is relatively compact. Northwestern is smack in the middle. A zany group of Northwestern students can travel to Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Purdue, Indiana, MSU and Michigan fairly easily. College could conceivably be “about road trips” if you attend Northwestern. That road trip reality does not apply for many Big Ten schools and does not apply to nearly every school from a less compact conference.
Rovell asks “What do Texas A&M students do?” Well, let’s look at the schedule. How many games does this effect? How severe is the effect?
Baylor and Texas are within a couple hours of College Station. Everywhere else in the Big 12 is a hike. Lubbock, Stillwater and Norman are in the 6-8 hour range. Ames, Manhattan, Columbia and Lawrence are all 11 hours or more. A&M plays four Big 12 road games: Ames (15h), Lubbock (8h), Norman (6h) and Manhattan (11h). Give the Aggies Arkansas’ schedule in the SEC West: Tuscaloosa (11h), Oxford (11h), Nashville (13h) and Baton Rouge (6h). The schedules are approximately the same total driving distance. Both have only one plausible weekend road trip game for a student, Norman or Baton Rouge. Texas A&M is moving from the extreme edge of one conference, to the extreme edge of another.
Assuming one of the games is Baylor or Texas. That’s one game per season fans would be inconvenienced. One game, when the Aggies play seven games at home and an eighth in the Jerry Dome. The number of traveling students is small. The number of traveling students who would be precluded from buying a plane ticket is smaller. The number of those precluded students who would be seriously miffed about not going to a ninth game would be even smaller, far too small to derail a move to the SEC.
Distance is a factor, but it’s overstated. Florida does not have an SEC school within a six-hour drive of it. Football seems to be popular. Fans travel. Same thing with Penn State. Even a move as seemingly incongruous as Oklahoma joining the Pac 12, would have them playing former Big 12 opponents and send Oklahoma to the West Coast for a game once a year.
Massive superconferences place college football’s distinct regional flavors at risk, but that’s a cultural argument, not a logistical one.
[Photo via Getty]