Explaining the science, preparation behind USC and UCLA’s Big Ten travel planning

LOS ANGELES — Her head coach, USC women’s volleyball senior Lindsey Miller laughed, loves “Top Gun.” Loves anything related to planes, really.

So it made sense, she surmised, that Brad Keller would be fascinated by the concept of “seat pitch.”

He had never flown charter in all his nearly three decades of coaching volleyball. But given the cost and distance and time that’d be spent flying commercial to new Big Ten road-game locations like Purdue, he and his coaching staff had lobbied USC for private intra-conference travel come 2024-25. After they were approved for four trips and begun planning, Keller was asked by a private-jet company how many seats he wanted, how much space in between seats he wanted, and, yes: his preferred seat pitch.

This was the specific angle, Keller learned, triangulated for one’s seat. It could make or break a flight — the reason why people might complain of sore backs on long trips or knock out for hours.

What, then, is the ideal seat pitch?

“Listen — we’re doing all of ’em,” Keller said. “We’re going to figure all of ’em out. And I’ll let you know in about six months.”

USC and UCLA’s long-awaited entry into the Big Ten has finally arrived, a seismic shift in college sports that’s taken two years of preparation from the conference’s newest Southern California members. And as the integration of West Coast programs into a primarily East Coast-based conference has led to widespread concerns over increased travel on student-athletes, USC and UCLA are both experimenting with a variety of solutions to ease the transition. Take, for one, the implementation of inter-conference charter flights for a wider array of sports — both schools have approved private planes for four separate road trips for respective women’s volleyball programs, which previously only flew commercial in Pac-12 travel.

But to a variety of coaches, athletes and experts, the increased travel isn’t nearly as massive of an issue as it’d seem on the surface. Take USC women’s volleyball, for example, who’ll travel further in the Big Ten than any other Trojans team this fall or winter.

“I don’t really think we’re too concerned about it,” Miller said, “and I hope those teams are counting on us being tired from traveling.”

“We’re not gonna be.”’

Here’s the science behind USC and UCLA’s preparation for the Big Ten, down to the seat pitch.

Cold, hard data

Shocker: USC and UCLA programs will fly much further for Big Ten road trips than they did in the Pac-12. But the sheer numbers of just how much further, still, are staggering.

As calculated by the Southern California News Group, utilizing Google Maps’ distance-between-two-points measurement, every team that travels at higher frequencies — basketball, football, soccer, volleyball — will fly double or triple the miles in the Big Ten that they did in the Pac-12.

Still, the massive increase in travel shouldn’t equate to much more time overall in the air. A variety of charter-plane companies cite a private jet’s cruising speed typically hovers around 600 miles an hour. With some rough division, that’d mean USC and UCLA women’s volleyball will spend about a day’s worth of time in the air on Big Ten road trips in 2024-25, as compared to slightly under a half day’s worth on Pac-12 road trips in 2023-24.

“It’s important to know that we aren’t necessarily traveling more this year, we are just traveling farther in some cases,” a USC spokesperson said in a statement. “And farther doesn’t always mean more difficult.”

Financial investments

Amid a decree by the UC Board of Regents for UCLA to pay $10 million annually to Cal for jumping ship from the Pac-12, a report from UC President Michael Drake revealed UCLA was expected to make nearly $60 million a year from the Big Ten’s media-rights deal.

Two years ago, with the promise of such dollars on the horizon, Jarmond began a series of meetings with over 200 student-athletes to ask a simple question: When we go to the Big Ten and we have more resources, what’s going to help you?

“The number-one thing about 85% of them said: more food and nutrition,” Jarmond said.

As such, UCLA has invested more than $4 million for 2024-25 in student-athlete nutrition, including offering breakfast and lunch to all Olympic athletes for the first time. The department, too, will spend more than $1.5 million annually for increased academic support, such as learning specialists available to travel on road trips.

UCLA’s athletic spending, though, is already stretched thin, with the department reporting another deficit for the 2022-23 fiscal year. And the dawn of the revenue-sharing model proposed in the House v. NCAA settlement, which UCLA will opt into and which Jarmond estimates will distribute over $20 million a year to Bruin student-athletes, will only add increased budgetary challenge in the Big Ten.

Scheduling

The genesis of UCLA’s scheduling efforts began at the Big Ten meetings in 2022, Jarmond said, where representatives first kicked around logistical ideas learned from the Pac-12, such as packaging multiple games on road trips to schools close to one another.

That’s carried over, two years later. Programs such as USC women’s volleyball, save for an individual trip to Nebraska, have Big Ten road trips designed around playing multiple schools within a two-day period. And when Washington and Oregon officially joined the conference last summer, UCLA pushed for as many programs as possible to play one of the Pacific Northwest schools on the road, Jarmond said, to minimize travel outside of the Pacific time zone.

“We develop our scheduling formats with input and feedback from school administrators, faculty representatives, medical professionals and head coaches looking at the potential impact on academics, health, safety, rest, recovery, and overall competitive equity,” Kerry Kenny, the Big Ten’s chief operating officer, wrote in a statement.

Keller, for one, had no input in USC’s Big Ten conference schedule, but was extremely intentional in crafting his non-conference slate. USC women’s volleyball will play just one tournament away from Southern California before their Big Ten matches kick off — as compared to three for UCLA — a highly intentional decision to ease student-athletes into the school year in their own beds before increased flight times later in the fall, Keller explained.

“I have no science behind it,” Keller cracked. “I have no proof behind it … but there’s thought behind it.”

Another important clarifier, in the midst of the transition: USC, for one, only has nine of 23 athletic programs with schedules impacted by the Big Ten move, a university spokesperson said.

Tournament-heavy sports such as men’s golf, for example, still have schedules designed around invitationals that aren’t in Big Ten-specific locations. Other USC sports that the conference doesn’t field, meanwhile, will either join or continue play in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF).

That includes women’s beach volleyball, a sport in which USC has won four straight NCAA titles. Head coach Dain Blanton said the program had signed a two-year deal with the MPSF, with the goal and hope the Big Ten would eventually grow to sponsor the sport by the end of the contract.

“The more Power Four conferences that have it,” Blanton said, “then I think the more powerful the sport is.”

Originally Published: August 25, 2024 at 11:31 a.m.