UCLA will travel 92% of Earth’s distance in miles amid college football realignment

Slogging through a long commute is a fact of life in Los Angeles, but UCLA will face a travel schedule unlike any team in college football this season after the school joined the Big Ten as part of this year’s historic conference realignment.

Looking ahead to the travel map in 2024, UCLA will end up covering a distance that almost rivals that of the Earth itself in miles.

In fact, no other Power conference school will travel as much as the Bruins this fall, with the team expected to cover 22,134 miles to and from their six road games this football season.

That number falls just 2,767 miles short of the circumference of the planet, meaning UCLA will end up covering an estimated 89 percent of the way around the world in pure mileage terms.

Hawaii: 5,126 round-trip miles
LSU: 3,198 miles
Penn State: 4,498 miles
Rutgers: 4,856 miles
Nebraska: 2,538 miles
Washington: 1,918 miles

That total mileage number is inflated partly by two early road games on UCLA’s schedule, including the long voyage off the continent to play at Hawaii in the opener, and the trip east to visit LSU, two of the team’s first four games this season.

That’s part of a brutal early slate that includes a home date against Oregon after that, followed by the cross-country trip to Penn State, and a flight to New Jersey to play Rutgers two weeks later.

And then after a bye week following that game, another trip, to visit Nebraska in Lincoln.

UCLA isn’t alone in facing a far longer commute after conference realignment. Other West Coast teams are in for the same slog, like Cal, which will cover 83 percent of the Earth’s surface in miles as it joins the ACC and faces road games at Auburn, Florida State, Wake Forest, and Pittsburgh.

Big Ten newcomers Washington and Oregon will travel almost 17,000 miles and more than 12,000 miles, respectively, in their road games this year.

USC, which also makes its Big Ten debut this fall, will travel an estimated 13,356 miles going to its road games, nearly 54 percent of the Earth’s circumference in miles.

Luckily for the Trojans, one of their home games is against UCLA, a mere 15 miles in distance from its campus to the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena.

Hawaii, as always, still holds the yearly record in college football among all level programs when it comes to travel: the Rainbow Warriors will cover an estimated 29,752 miles this season, a full 5,000 miles more than the distance around the Earth at the equator.

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