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For now, Clemson is still part of the Atlantic Coast Conference. That could change in the future with the Southeastern and Big Ten Conferences prompting recent conference realignments along with their recent actions, which could alter future travel plans as well.
As Clemson and the rest of the ACC stand firm for now — the league’s rights deal with ESPN is playing a big role right now — a Clemson insider is pondering a question for the Tigers’ future: How far should Clemson travel as a member of one of those mega-conferences?
After looking at potential travel destinations in the SEC, we’re entertaining the hypothesis of Clemson joining the Big Ten here. Adding Clemson would change the geographic footprint of the Big Ten, as the conference does not yet have a football member in the Southeast. Ohio State, located 485 miles away in Columbus, is the closest Big Ten program to Clemson.
Yet that’s a hop, skip, and a jump compared to the Big Ten’s recent additions. The conference stretches from coast to coast after poaching Southern Cal and UCLA from the Pac-12 as the 15th and 16th members. Those schools will begin competing in the Big Ten in 2024, adding cross country to Clemson’s itinerary.
It’s hard to know how often the Tigers will have to walk to Los Angeles. While the ACC is one of the Power Five conferences and has announced plans to eliminate divisions in the future, the Big Ten has not made that decision. So while we don’t know what the conference’s schedule model will look like when Clemson joins the league, we’ll start with a broad look at travel distances before getting into more detail.
The distance from Clemson to each ACC stadium is a combined 5,794 miles, or about 10,000 miles less than the total distance from each Big Ten stadium. The fact that the Big Ten currently has two more teams from the ACC contributes to that disparity, but it’s not the hundreds, if not thousands, of miles that separate Clemson from every other Big Ten school.
Although Clemson made the four shortest trips as part of an eight-game conference in the league’s first year, that included Ohio State, Indiana (520 miles), Maryland (530) and Penn State (654). The Tigers’ road schedule covers 2,189 miles. That’s 500 more miles than Clemson plans to travel in the ACC this fall to Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, Florida State and Boston College, Clemson’s longest trip in the conference at 966 miles.
With the addition of USC and UCLA, the Big Ten now has nine institutions within 700 miles of Clemson. One of the non-California schools (Iowa) will be more than 900 miles away, while the other two (Minnesota and Nebraska) will each have trips of more than 1,100 miles.
And if Clemson has to make the trek to Los Angeles or Pasadena every two years, which would likely double the distance if the Big Ten adopted a rotating schedule or pod system. The Rose Bowl, where UCLA plays home games, is 2,292 miles away, while USC’s Coliseum will be a 2,303-mile trip.
Of the two moves Clemson could make to another conference, the jump to the Big Ten would be more taxing and expensive from a travel standpoint.
Note: Distances for this story were calculated in miles from Clemson Memorial Stadium to each rival’s stadium using the shortest route shown on Apple Maps. They also adopted driving as a mode of transportation. Flying changes the distances slightly.
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