On the road again ... and again ... and again

Move to Big 12 requires more travel for UCF — and its fans

If UCF football fans wanted to hop in the car and drive to every Big 12 game the Knights will play in their new conference this fall, it would take a massive effort.

Of course, most die-hard fans wanting to see UCF compete against teams it has never played, inside stadiums it has rarely visited, could simply fly on a plane instead. Still, fans hoping to see their school on the road this year and beyond will do much more traveling than what was required in the past decade as a member of the American Athletic Conference.

The Knights will shift from visiting larger cities such as Philadelphia, New Orleans, Tampa and Memphis, Tenn., to traditional college towns such as Lawrence (Kan.), Lubbock (Texas) and Norman (Okla.).

Comparing the travel required in UCF’s last season in the AAC to its first in the Big 12 shows exactly how much more difficult it will be to see the Knights on the road.

When calculating the total distance between the campuses of UCF and its AAC opponents, the football team traveled 2,877 miles, including a second trip to New Orleans for the AAC championship game at Tulane.

Including the conference title game in the travel calculations is needed because the Knights only played four AAC road games in the regular season last year. This fall UCF will travel five times in conference action as Big 12 members. That number will fluctuate between four and five each season.

Combining the mileage between UCF’s campus and the locations of this year’s regular-season Big 12 opponents, it’s clear how much more the Knights will travel. It’s 6,343 miles — or nearly 3,500 more miles compared to last year.

On average, the UCF football team will travel nearly 700 more miles than last season in the AAC.

This travel not only takes more time but it hurts the wallet too. That’s the new reality to see UCF on the road.

Not only will the Knights have to change how far their athletes and coaches travel but the way they travel as well, according to athletics director Terry Mohajir.

While the Knights regularly chartered a plane for football, it was common for sports such as basketball, baseball and softball to fly commercial airlines. On occasion, basketball would charter too, but UCF often dealt with commercial flights. That’s not the case in the Big 12. “More [Big 12 schools] charter in other sports and Olympic sports than we do now,” Mohajir recently told the Sentinel. “Part of that is to get people back to class. If we don’t do it, things can be used against us in recruiting, so we have to travel differently.”

While traveling on a charter plane versus an everyday commercial flight sounds great, Mohajir knows what that means financially. Still, he’s willing to make that commitment over time as the Knights continue to catch up financially with their new conference mates.

“If you travel differently, it costs a lot more money,” he said. “But we will navigate through all that and we can’t do everything in one year.”