Brown: Travel concerns not as daunting in football

Spending the last decade as the eastern-most member in the Big 12 can present some issues for some of the sports at West Virginia when it comes to travel.

Former basketball head coach Bob Huggins certainly didn’t keep it a secret that the demands of the travel schedule for his program were very challenging and unique. The same can be said for the rest of the non-revenue sports that trek across the country on flights to play conference matchups.

But for football those issues are mitigated.

The biggest reason simply boils down to numbers. In football, teams often play only five road games at most, and it doesn’t present nearly the same difficulties.

“Less impact in football than the other sports,” head coach Neal Brown said.

One exception to that is when it comes to Saturday night games. While the experience has no effect on the game being played, it can spill over into the preparation for the following week.

That’s because when games are being played late by the time the football program makes it back to Morgantown it is often very early in the morning the following day.

That cuts into the time that is typically spent for preparation for the upcoming opponent, which a big bulk of that is often completed over those first two days of the week by the coaching staff.

“It doesn’t affect the game at all, but it might potentially affect the next game,” Brown said.

And it’s admittedly different the further you travel so when you don’t know a game time until two weeks out it makes things even more difficult.

For example, West Virginia plans to bus to Cincinnati and then fly back following the game but for the road trip out west to Arizona the Mountaineers decision on whether to go early or stay late depends on the kickoff.

“The game is the game, it’s really about the logistics. Sleep is so important and routine is so important, so how do you maximize your guys sleep and how do you stay in the same routine, even though you’re going over multiple time zones,” Brown said.

Still, those concerns are not nearly as challenging as some of those faced by other sports in order to meet the demands of the travel schedule although adding opponents also situated in the Eastern time zone such as Cincinnati and Central Florida could help in that department.

Travel is always a focus playing as an outlier in a Southwestern based league, but at least terms of football that doesn’t present nearly the difficulties that it does elsewhere.