Expanded college football conferences mean extra travel for some of the biggest programs in the country.
The SEC may not have it as big as the Big Ten after their West Coast expansion, but the additions of the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners have added some extra travel to the schedules of top programs.
Cameron Ohnysty with AggiesWire ranked the SEC teams by distance traveled for the 2024 season. The LSU Tigers led the conference with a grand total of 6,789 miles of travel despite only having four road games. A neutral site game against the USC Trojans in Las Vegas is far and away the team's farthest game, coming in nearly 3,000 miles away.
That's a ton of traveling for an LSU team that's hoping to compete for a national title, or at least a College Football Playoff appearance. Any postseason games will add even more travel miles for the program.
The Missouri Tigers aren't far behind LSU. They come in at No. 2 on the list with 6,600 miles traveled over five road games. They'll head to the East Coast for their farthest game of the year to take on UMass.
It's not an ideal schedule for a lot of these SEC schools, but it doesn't compare to what some Big Ten programs are going to have to go through. The UCLA Bruins will have to travel more than 22,000 miles during their season. In fact, 10 of the schools in that conference will travel more than LSU will have to this year.
So it may not seem ideal for Brian Kelly's program, but at least they're not in the Big Ten.
