As a life-long Syracuse fan, I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we will be travelling to Berkley, CA and hosting Stanford for CONFERENCE games! And to think I used to laugh about how DePaul and Marquette were in the Big East...
An issue that most in the media no longer talk about as the season approaches. So, thanks for raising this concern again.
This discussion naturally leads older people in lawn chairs like me to asking, "well, how have Mick and Keith done it for decades?"...or to paraphrase from a legendary Louis CK bit, it's not like they're traveling in covered wagons and arriving with a whole different group of people than they started out with.
But along a more serious vein, what can college sports and today's generation learn from Mick and Keith? A few things it turns out:
Mode of travel matters to the performance - a lot. Are you traveling commercial or private charter? The Stones were an early adopter of wide body private jets to handle their heavy touring obligations. In fact, websites are dedicated to the history of the Stones' touring planes.
The WNBA learned this lesson the hard way until private charters became available just this year. Fans of Cameron Crowe's seminal Almost Famous will quickly recall the new manager (played by Jimmy Fallon in an eerie homage to Lynyrd Skynyrd) explaining how much more money Stillwater could make more easily using a plane versus a bus.
For air travel, miles traveled matter less than time zones. Flying from Stockholm to Rome? Not a problem...see you at the show tomorrow night. Flying from Madrid to Vladivostok? Need some down time at the venue to adjust. Flying eastward or westward? College football is no different. Flying from New Brunswick, New Jersey to Gainesville, Florida is less of an issue than going to Iowa City, Iowa...despite the mileage being nearly identical.
People intuitively understand this as a result of daylight savings. Time zones and jet lag are real impacts and detrimental to performance. Gamblers have long factored travel from the East Coast to the West Coast into their point spread evaluations.
Third, Mick understood that your travel is a huge marketing opportunity to be leveraged. For their 1972 American Tour - dubbed the Stones Touring Party or "STP" - the Stones wove a narrative with the press that their decadent air travel was a part of their whole bad boy party scene and the need to see their live shows.
College revenue sports will soon adopt the same approach for recruiting. Remember when locker rooms were the bling you had to have to get an 18-year-old into your program? Soon it will be an arms race of lavish 767s and A320s for travel.
Last, a comparison for perspective. Before greater distances made air travel a must, teams traveled by bus to away games. These trips were long and difficult. Yet, many former athletes lovingly speak of these times and how it bonded them to their teammates. Just like the bus, Doris, in Almost Famous, was so key to the music of Stillwater.
The greater worry for me is not the time of travel or its difficulties - its the added expense. The incremental cost of travel to already strained athletic budgets that are in the red at most schools today will likely lead to the elimination of many non-revenue sports as did was when COVID reduced revenues. This has been discussed by some schools and a few in the media some as a real and present danger - but not enough I'm afraid.
As a life-long Syracuse fan, I still can't wrap my head around the fact that we will be travelling to Berkley, CA and hosting Stanford for CONFERENCE games! And to think I used to laugh about how DePaul and Marquette were in the Big East...
An issue that most in the media no longer talk about as the season approaches. So, thanks for raising this concern again.
This discussion naturally leads older people in lawn chairs like me to asking, "well, how have Mick and Keith done it for decades?"...or to paraphrase from a legendary Louis CK bit, it's not like they're traveling in covered wagons and arriving with a whole different group of people than they started out with.
But along a more serious vein, what can college sports and today's generation learn from Mick and Keith? A few things it turns out:
Mode of travel matters to the performance - a lot. Are you traveling commercial or private charter? The Stones were an early adopter of wide body private jets to handle their heavy touring obligations. In fact, websites are dedicated to the history of the Stones' touring planes.
The WNBA learned this lesson the hard way until private charters became available just this year. Fans of Cameron Crowe's seminal Almost Famous will quickly recall the new manager (played by Jimmy Fallon in an eerie homage to Lynyrd Skynyrd) explaining how much more money Stillwater could make more easily using a plane versus a bus.
For air travel, miles traveled matter less than time zones. Flying from Stockholm to Rome? Not a problem...see you at the show tomorrow night. Flying from Madrid to Vladivostok? Need some down time at the venue to adjust. Flying eastward or westward? College football is no different. Flying from New Brunswick, New Jersey to Gainesville, Florida is less of an issue than going to Iowa City, Iowa...despite the mileage being nearly identical.
People intuitively understand this as a result of daylight savings. Time zones and jet lag are real impacts and detrimental to performance. Gamblers have long factored travel from the East Coast to the West Coast into their point spread evaluations.
Third, Mick understood that your travel is a huge marketing opportunity to be leveraged. For their 1972 American Tour - dubbed the Stones Touring Party or "STP" - the Stones wove a narrative with the press that their decadent air travel was a part of their whole bad boy party scene and the need to see their live shows.
College revenue sports will soon adopt the same approach for recruiting. Remember when locker rooms were the bling you had to have to get an 18-year-old into your program? Soon it will be an arms race of lavish 767s and A320s for travel.
Last, a comparison for perspective. Before greater distances made air travel a must, teams traveled by bus to away games. These trips were long and difficult. Yet, many former athletes lovingly speak of these times and how it bonded them to their teammates. Just like the bus, Doris, in Almost Famous, was so key to the music of Stillwater.
The greater worry for me is not the time of travel or its difficulties - its the added expense. The incremental cost of travel to already strained athletic budgets that are in the red at most schools today will likely lead to the elimination of many non-revenue sports as did was when COVID reduced revenues. This has been discussed by some schools and a few in the media some as a real and present danger - but not enough I'm afraid.
As always, appreciate the work here.