From The Athletic today:
In the Big Ten, which sent 155 athletes to the Tokyo Games, it is unclear whether UCLA or USC will charter flights for all programs now making a much farther trek east. But missed class time, elongated travel days and the difficulties associated with rest and recovery on long flights are among the chief topics of concern.
Former USC women’s soccer coach Keidane McAlpine, now the head coach at Georgia, was, like most everyone else, stunned when he heard the news. McAlpine led the Trojans to eight NCAA Tournament appearances during his time in Los Angeles, including a national title in 2016.
“How to manage that, the class time, the recovery, providing them an opportunity to be at their very best, I’m glad I’m not in it,” he said. “I’m happy I’m in the SEC, where we do have the ability to charter flights and have some shorter flights and have the ability to, from an academic standpoint, put our women in a situation where they can get all of the things they need. And athletically, to be able to recover.”
NCAA rules mandate a maximum of 20 hours per week for required athletic activities, but that excludes travel.
“One of the rubs that I could see, especially having come from a public school, is professors don’t have to allow online learning,” said former UCLA gymnastics coach Valorie Kondos Field, who led the Bruins to seven national titles. “That was the one thing: What’s the rub going to be between university athletics and professors?”
Many sports traditionally in the Pac-12 have travel partner locations, which allow a school to fly into one location and play two schools, with a bus ride in between, such as the four-plus hour drive from Washington to Washington State. According to a 17-page report produced for the UC regents to assess the move, that would continue in the Big Ten, although flights might be needed between the competitions in some cases because the distances between the sites are greater.
A flight from LAX to Newark is at least five hours. Ditto for a flight to Baltimore. That’s only if they’re booked on direct flights. And what about getting to more remote locales, like Penn State? A chartered flight could get teams to University Park Airport in State College, which might be a necessity for the L.A. schools, otherwise a near-two-hour bus ride would be added to a long flight to Harrisburg.
“Any normal human being, when they fly, they’re swelling, and the recovery time is going to be longer,” Kondos Field said. “(A chartered flight) does improve the sell, and I hope the money is used for that for all sports — not just a handful. It’s still time in the air.”
McAlpine said keeping teams on a fair playing field will also need to be taken into account.
“Let’s say you’re going to play Penn State at Penn State three time zones away and you come back to L.A. to play Iowa, who was at home on the weekend, and they’re taking their one flight,” McAlpine said. “There’s a lot of logistics.”
McCullough recalls when having TSA PreCheck at LAX was the highlight of a travel day. Otherwise, it was cramming into middle seats, dealing with flight delays and being overall groggy on campus after returning from a three-to-four-day trip. And that was just a jaunt to the Northwest or the Bay Area.
“It’s just a tremendous ask of athletes to sacrifice their body more than they already are for their sports and for the sake of the school. I have real problems with this,” she said. “It solidifies what I’ve been telling people for a while now that these schools don’t have their athletes’ best interests in mind all the time.”