As one of three Big Ten teams on the East Coast, Penn State will be traveling more miles than most teams in the conference in 2024. But how far will the Nittany Lions travel compared to their conference rivals, which include four new teams from the East Coast? Here’s a look at Penn State’s football travel schedule and how it compares to the other 17 teams in the conference. Books.com.
Pennsylvania State University
Penn State will travel 8,602.46 miles in 2024, sixth-longest among Big Ten Conference teams, with trips to USC, Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to the report. The Nittany Lions will play a total of five away games, including trips to West Virginia and Purdue, and will cross 10 time zones in the process.
Penn State’s Week 6 game against USC will obviously be the team’s longest road trip, covering 4,494.72 miles round trip from State College (or Harrisburg, where the team typically flies) to Los Angeles, while the Nittany Lions’ season opener against the Mountaineers will cover 273.52 miles, making it the team’s shortest road trip in 2024.
The rest of the Big Ten
Not surprisingly, the four West Coast teams will travel more than any other conference team this season. UCLA will travel the most distance in the Big Ten in 2024, covering 22,048.04 miles and crossing time zones 26 times. To understand just how grueling the Bruins’ travel schedule will be, consider that their shortest trip to Nebraska is 1,912.62 miles round trip.
Rounding out the rest of the top five are Washington, USC, Oregon and Rutgers, with the Nittany Lions traveling 675.76 fewer miles round trip than the Scarlet Knights. Indiana, Purdue, Michigan and Ohio State all have the shortest travel distances with just four away games in 2024, which could give them an advantage over a hectic schedule like the Bruins’.
As Penn State coach James Franklin noted earlier this year, the travel schedule will be a challenge across the conference.
“We look at how teams that travel out west, whether it’s major college football or the NFL, are doing compared to teams that travel out east and we think honestly and thoroughly about that and what we have to do to put ourselves in the best position to make that trip successful. That’s what we have to look at as a football program,” Franklin said. “That’s what we have to look at as an athletic department and make sure we make the best choice for our players and our team.”
It is the program with the highest chance of success.
“I’ll never forget when I was at the University of Maryland. … We had a home-and-home game scheduled against Cal. [Maryland athletic director] “These guys are from California. They came to us and we played, I think, an 11 a.m. game, and this time an East Coast team, the Maryland Terrapins, did extremely well. And then the next year we went there and it was a 7 p.m. game, and the California team did extremely well. So we’re taking all of that into consideration and developing a best practices plan based on NFL teams and how they do it, college teams and what we need to do to be successful, and probably spending a lot of time on what’s the best way to do this while making sure our players are student-athletes and have that experience.”
For more information about Big Ten travel, Report from bookies.com.
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Seth Engle has covered Penn State football and men’s basketball for the past four years, most recently as football editor for The Daily Collegian. His work has appeared in The Associated Press, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PennLive and Centre Daily Times. Follow him on X (or Twitter). Follow.
