Arizona State recently conducted a study on the carbon footprint that college football conferences will cause. Historically, it was rare for college football teams or sports teams to travel across the country more than one time zone more than once or twice per season.
For example, in the old Pac-12, the conference was played in the Pacific and Mountain time zones. A Pac-12 team would only travel to the Central or Eastern time zone if they played a nonconference or bowl game, which was even rarer since most were played in the conference’s footprint.
ACC and Big 10 Schools Will See More Cross-Country Trips
With Washington, Oregon, USC, and UCLA now in the Big 10 and Stanford and Cal now in the ACC, the amount of carbon emissions that these teams will leave, not only in football but all sports, is about to double or even triple normal amounts.
For example, Cal will travel to Wake Forest, SMU, Pittsburgh, and Florida State while welcoming in Syracuse, NC State, and Miami. The same kind of travel is true about the other West Coast schools now in new conferences.
The study suggests that future realignment should consider factors such as carbon footprint and that schedules should be aligned currently to allow teams to stay within a certain region for multiple games. This can be done more reasonably in sports that play multiple times per week.
Ways That Conferences Can Emit a Smaller Footprint
In many sports, the answer is simple: schedule multiple games in a week in the same region and then play at home the following week for two games. This can work in many sports, including soccer, basketball, volleyball, and baseball; however, this likely won’t happen for football. The only possible exception would be if a team can play a late Saturday game and then a Thursday game the following week. Even then, asking a team not to go home for a few days would be a tall ask.
One possible change that could happen is to make rules for nonconference opponents. Whether that means all three games need to be within a certain distance, or that one game needs to be a bus ride away, the possibilities are endless, but this at least seems like a possible solution to somewhat lower emissions.
Another possibility is to make teams double up on trips. For example, if Michigan plays Cal and Michigan State plays Stanford, the two could take the same plane to California before getting on shorter flights/bus rides to their destinations. This could be awkward between rival schools, but if the ACC and other conferences are serious about reducing a carbon footprint, that is an option.
What Will Likely Happen With College Football
Nothing. Like it or not, big institutions and celebrities like to scream “carbon emissions” and “global warming” to everyone and then take a private jet to their next event, where they share the same message. While the intentions may be good, in all likelihood, other than perhaps guidance to play more local schools in the nonconference, there won’t be any set rules or changes to force teams.
But even then, we’d be kidding ourselves if Oregon and Georgia suddenly couldn’t play a nonconference game because of the carbon emissions that a plane ride would cause.
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