Warren Grimes
For the Stanford women, the season ended Thursday when the
team was upset by Portland in the first round of the WBIT. Stanford led most of the game, played good
defense, but was unable to find sufficient offensive spark in the second half
and overtime. The Portland coach may
have gotten the ear of the refs. The
game was called in a way that limited Nunu Agara’s inside moves and her late
game participation. Agara was the team’s
clutch performer all season. Her absence
in much of the fourth quarter and in the final minute of overtime was pivotal.
I am proud of the team.
They had a difficult season but showed mettle and fight throughout. Seniors Elena Boscana and Brooke Demetre
brought us multiple highlight moments.
And fast developing freshmen and sophomores are a reason for optimism
for next year. They will be joined by a
remarkable freshmen class that includes three McDonald’s All Americans.
The bigger and longer-term issue is how to fix the perverse
results of conference realignments. The
troubling features of conference shifts affect all non-football sports. They affect not only Stanford but at least 5
other former Pac-12 schools: California, Oregon, UCLA, USC, and
Washington. As a result of substantial additional travel
time, the teams from all six schools are now at a comparative disadvantage when
matched with conference rivals.
The impetus for conference realignment was and is primarily
the desire to maintain maximum football exposure and revenues. Every school wants a share of gold mine football
revenues. What makes sense for football
and its revenues, however, makes no sense for the rest of collegiate
athletics.
For the six former Pac-12 schools, all of them on the
Pacific rim, the negative impact of realignments is obvious and severe. Using Stanford women’s basketball as an
example, let’s look at some of these negatives.
Negative Effects of Long Plane Trips and Constant time
Changes - For the Stanford women,
playing in the ACC meant five long weekend trips of up to 6000 miles roundtrip
for each. Four of those trips were
weekend matchups against ACC opponents.
The fifth was the ACC tournament.
Each one-way trip meant up to 5 hours in the air. For the five roundtrip treks, that meant
close to 50 hours of plane travel during the conference season (not counting local travel
to and from the airport). That’s a lot
of time to be confined to an airplane.
On top of this, four of these trips meant a three-hour time
change at the destination followed by another three-hour shift on return. That’s stress for body clocks for persons at any
age. The stress created by time changes
affects not only players but coaches and other support staff who travel with
the team.
Was it an accident that Stanford women had a very
respectable home game record but a miserable record on the road? I think not.
Playing on the road is tough under any circumstances, but consider the
difference between road games in the old Pac-12 and road games in the ACC: All
Pac-12 games involved much shorter travel and at most a 1-hour time change
(most were played in the same time zone).
Impact on Athletic Department Budget – Paying for all
this travel takes a heavy bite out of the Athletic Department’s budget. If a road trip in the old Pac-12 usually
involved less than a 1200-mile round trip, and an ACC round trip typically
involves a 6000-mile round trip, travel costs are going to be much higher. These increased costs are compounded if the
school charters a plane for the team, something that I understand was done for
the men’s and women’s basketball teams.
Impact on Recruiting – This impact is more difficult
to predict. Consider, however, the
following. Suppose Stanford is in a
battle with Duke or South Carolina to attract a talented high school athlete. If I am the coach at one of the Carolina
schools, I am going to tell that athlete that if they choose Stanford, they
will spend 50 hours on a plane during the conference season alone. If they stay at one of the Carolina schools,
they may have only 10 or 20% of that travel time during the conference season.
This could affect not only the recruitment of players, but
Stanford’s ability to attract coaches and other support staff. Many of these folks are likely to have family
obligations that make it much more attractive to have far more limited travel
times. Some Pac-12 games may involve
fewer overnight stays, such as a trip to Los Angeles compared to a trip to the
East Coast.
Impact on the Environment – The Los Angeles Times
wrote recently about the negative effects of conference realignments on the
environment. Quite right. If you consider that ACC travel compared to
travel in the old Pac-12 means a difference of roughly 4800 additional air
travel miles for each weekend road trip, and multiply this by the 5 conference
road trips, for Stanford women’s BB alone this means 24,000 additional air
travel miles for the team. Now add to
that the additional miles for men’s BB and for the 12 or more other conference
sports, and you get a collective number of at least 240,000 additional air
travel miles for Stanford teams ( The 240,000 figure is discounted – some sports such as women’s volleyball – may
have a comparable number of road trips while others, such as men’s and women’s
soccer, will likely have fewer).
The total environmental impact of conference realignments
for the six former Pac-12 schools will be far higher. Cal’s travel miles should be the same as
Stanford’s while the 4 schools that joined the Big Ten will have fewer miles
(much of their travel will be to the Midwest, not the East Coast). A crude estimate of total additional travel
miles for the six former Pac 12 might be 1 million. That’s not the end of it. ACC and Big Ten teams not on the Pacific
Coast will have a lot less added travel.
Still, collectively, these conference teams will have as many cross
country trips as the total for the six West Coast schools. So the total additional travel miles for all ACC
and Big Ten teams may be closer to 2 million.
That’s a lot additional carbon dioxide pumped into our atmosphere, and for
no good reason.
Ending unnecessary travel will not, by itself, end the
climate crisis. What is galling,
however, is that six prominent academic institutions, each with environmental
scientists on their faculty, would sign on to athletic arrangements that worsen
global warming and that simultaneously put their non-football teams at a
comparative disadvantage.
There is no need to schedule cross country trips to
improve competition – The Pac-12 was a powerhouse in nearly all
non-football sports. In virtually every
conference sport, the Pac-12 was one of the top two or three conferences in the
country. All that cross-country travel
doesn’t improve the level of competition and, in some cases, may lessen it.
Fixing the Problem – Someone, perhaps a senior leader
like Tara VanDerveer, should take the lead in calling out the insanity of
current conference alignments for non-football sports. Right now, Charmin Smith, Cori Close, and
Lindsay Gottlieb are all involved in the women’s NCAA tournament. As soon as that ends, get all the women’s BB
coaches on a conference call, adding the coaches from Oregon and
Washington. Get them thinking and
talking about solutions. Then set up a
zoom meeting that includes every other coach of a non-football sport from one
of the Pacific rim schools. The purpose
of the meeting would be to get all of them to press their athletic directors
and university presidents for a meaningful way to end this insanity.
What are the solutions?
The most comprehensive solution would be to cut football loose to make
its own conference alignments while allowing non-football sports to join
genuinely regional conferences that eliminate unnecessary and disadvantageous
long journeys. Notre Dame already
separates football from other sports.
However, because of long-term media contracts, this across-the-board solution may be
unlikely in the near term.
There still could be meaningful short-term steps that could lessen the six schools’ comparative travel disadvantages. Using women’s hoops as an example, the ACC and the Big Ten could agree to shorten the conference schedule, eliminating one or two of the required cross-country treks. Replacement games could still count to conference statistics based on the quality of the opponent that a team plays. This would allow Stanford and the other Pacific rim teams to schedule games against one another and other traditional opponents, such as Oregon State and Washington State. Similar approaches might be taken for other non-football sports.
This proposal could encounter resistance from other
conference members, some of whom might prefer to keep the former Pac-12 schools
at a disadvantage by forcing them to travel more. There are still advantages to all conference
members in approving such a proposal. It
could enhance the reputation and national reach of the conferences, allowing all conference members more choice in selecting opponents. It is also likely to contribute to fairness
and long-term conference stability.
Finally, depending on how the scheme is set up, it could marginally
decrease cross-country travel for all conference members.
Let’s get off the starting line. Everyone who supports or works to foster
Stanford’s non-football sports should demand action. If you
support Cal, or any of the other four Pacific rim schools, welcome aboard. We need broad support from all six schools to make this happen.
Note:Some language in the final three paragraphs was amended on Marach 23, 2025.
