ACC Realignment: California & Stanford football have an insane travel itinerary in 2024

Beginning this season, the ACC is welcoming three new members to the conference with SMU, Stanford, and California joining. Realignment talk is just beginning as the future of the ACC is one huge question mark with Clemson and Florida State looking to get out. Who else would follow if that ever happens remains to be seen.

This season, Virginia Tech will travel to cross-country to play Stanford on Oct. 5 before entering a bye week. That’s the only new addition to the ACC that the Hokies will play, however, with a new conference comes a new travel itinerary for schools and California and Stanford will find that out the hard way.

Both former PAC-12 schools will have a difficult travel schedule this season, however, it’s something that they had to expect would happen with realignment. California will travel over 20,000 miles this season from the West Coast to the East and everywhere in between. The Bears will travel to Auburn (Sept. 7) for a non-conference game, but their long ACC trips are Florida State (Sept. 21), Pittsburgh (Oct. 12), Wake Forest (Nov. 8) and SMU (Nov. 30).

As for Stanford, the travel miles are less, but not a lot less. The Cardinal will log over 14,000 miles in the air for football with an even more trickier schedule than California. Stanford will play at Syracuse on Sept. 20, a Friday night, then have to travel to Clemson eight days later before hosting Virginia Tech. After Brent Pry and his team visit, the Cardinal will play one week later at Notre Dame and their final cross-country trip will be on Nov. 2 at North Carolina State.

That’s over 34,000 combined miles for California and Stanford this upcoming fall for football alone, but it’s what college sports are turning into with realignment, travel, travel, and more travel.