Spending the past decade as the easternmost member of the Big 12 could pose some travel issues for some West Virginia sports.
Former basketball head coach Bob Huggins has certainly made no secret that the demands of the travel schedule for his program are extremely difficult and unique. The same goes for other non-revenue sports, where players fly across the country to play conference games.
But in the case of football, those problems are alleviated.
The biggest reason is simply the numbers. In football, teams often only play at most five road games, which doesn’t have nearly the same difficulty.
“Football is less affected than other sports,” head coach Neil Brown said.
The only exception is Saturday night games. This experience won’t affect the game you’re playing, but it can affect your preparation for the following week.
That’s because when games are played late, the football program often doesn’t get back to Morgantown until early the next morning.
This reduces the time normally spent preparing for the next opponent, the majority of which is often completed by the coaching staff in the first two days of the week.
“It doesn’t affect the game at all, but it could affect the next game,” Brown said.
And obviously things are different the further you go, so when you don’t know the game time until two weeks from now, things get even more difficult.
For example, if West Virginia plans to take a bus to Cincinnati and fly back after the game, but head west on a road trip to Arizona, the Mountaineers will have to decide whether to go early or stay late depending on kickoff. conduct.
“A game is a game, and it’s really about logistics. Sleep is very important, and routine is also very important. So how can we get the most sleep for our members, and how do we get them to sleep again and again?” “It’s all about how you maintain the same routine even if you repeat the zone,” Brown said.
Still, these concerns are not as difficult as some faced by other sports in meeting the demands of travel schedules, although adding opponents located in Eastern time zones such as Cincinnati and Central Florida It could be helpful in that regard.
Travel is always a focus when playing as an outlier in a league based in the South West, but it doesn’t present as much of a challenge as other leagues, at least when it comes to soccer.
