Conference Realignment, Travel Proven Difficult for UCLA Athletics

A story by ESPN's Kyle Bonagura detailed a much-discussed, yet underrated aspect of the collapse of the Pac-12 and ensuing move to the Big Ten for UCLA and USC.

Bonagura spoke to various Bruins coaches about the difficulty of travel in their inaugural season in the conference, and he received differing viewpoints.

"For football, the situation was different," Bonagura wrote.

"The travel generally involves shorter trips than most nonrevenue sports, and schools typically charter flights for football, which limits many of the headaches that come with commercial travel. Most of the trips align with weekend game schedules, so there's less interference with academics, making the whole proposition more manageable."

The travel was mostly difficult on the sports that had to play multiple games a week, unlike football. And a new conference filled with programs on the east coast meant more than double the travel than seasons prior.

Bonagura spoke to Bruins women's soccer coach Margueritte Aozasa, who shared a different perspective than men's basketball coach Mick Cronin.

Aozasa was surprised at first, but eventually adopted the mindset that her team and coaching staff must simply adapt to this unique challenge.

"The biggest adjustment we'll make going forward is investing more in recovery," Aozasa told Bonagura. "Our team actually performed really well on the road, but it was the games the next week, when we had to come back after making that longer travel trip, that we noticed it.

"We have to be adaptable. We have to be advocates for the health and wellbeing of our players, but we also have to be adaptable. That's the only way forward in college sports today."

Cronin, however, denounced such a mindset. He was an avid critic of the new travel format and felt that it was the main reason his team wasn't able to reach its full potential last season.

Bruins basketball finished tied for fourth in the conference and with a 23-11 overall record before losing to Tennessee in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

"By the time UCLA's season was over," Bonagura noted, "the Bruins took 12 trips outside of Los Angeles, traversing the country to the tune of approximately 35,240 miles in the air. After flying approximately 21,000 miles the year before, it was an increase of about 66%."

Although Cronin made a compelling case for his squad, Bonagura made a fair counterpoint.

"While it should be easy to understand his point, and it is hard to argue against it," he wrote. "Cronin isn't exactly a sympathetic figure, for a couple reasons. The most obvious is that UCLA brought this upon itself. While Cronin might not have been consulted on the decision to leave to the Pac-12 and is in no way responsible for the move, the university was not forced into this new normal like, for example, Oregon State was. UCLA determined the increased media revenue from being in the Big Ten was worth sacrificing in other ways.