Travel is part of sports, an unavoidable reality that “road games” very much imply the need to get into some form of transportation and go somewhere else. Often times the milage doesn’t ever make it to the surface of the conversation surrounding a college football season because everyone is traveling to familiar places. Nobody much thinks about how far away Ohio State is from State College [327ish miles] or how late a team might get back from a night game on the road [often 3/4 in the morning in time for Sunday walk-through.]
But it does add up. Late road games turn into early Sunday mornings which turn into a week of catching up on sleep you never got in the first place. If there’s anything that can get a football team through the grind of the season it’s getting to bed on time and nothing helps you get to bed on time quite like an easy travel schedule. Don’t believe in sleep mattering all that much? Penn State does. In 2022 the athletic department partnered with WHOOP to track sleep and many other health and wellness measurements on an individual basis [a partnership former Penn State men’s basketball coach Pat Chambers once championed years earlier.]
In any case, travel is very much part of the equation because sleep and rest is very much part of winning. And the good new for Penn State – they don’t need to do too much of it this year.
It’s an inexact science, but during the regular season Google Maps [ignoring that Penn State flies to many games] gives the Nittany Lions a round trip total of 4374 miles over the course of the upcoming regular season. That is the least since 2018 and nearly 800 fewer miles than Penn State had to travel during the regular season in 2022 [the most in a regular season under James Franklin excluding the 2014 season and Ireland trip.]
Of course travel milage doesn’t always equate to winning or losing. In 2019 the Nittany Lions went 11-2 with 5474 miles of regular season travel but also won the Big Ten with a travel-friendly schedule of just 3696 miles traveled during the regular season. Of Penn State’s four, 11-win seasons, three of them involved more travel milage than Penn State has slated for this upcoming 2023 campaign – trips to Northwestern and Illinois are the main culprits here.
Penn State will spend the bulk of the season facing fairly light travel as the Nittany Lions will only need to leave the state twice from Oct. 1 until Nov. 18. Once will come with that trip to Ohio State and the other will fall on Nov. 4 as Penn State makes a fairly short trip to College Park, Maryland to take on the Terps. Penn State will spend five of the last eight weeks of the year at home.
Also of note, Penn State will finish out September at Northwestern but will go 20 days between that game and facing Ohio State in Columbus. In between Penn State will have a bye week and an Oct. 14 meeting with UMass prior to that clash with the Buckeyes. All told, Penn State will play two games over the course of nearly a month between Sept. 24 and Oct. 20.
Then again, all of this will change in 2024 as UCLA and USC join the conference, so enjoy the easy travel schedules while you can, Penn State.
