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How Far Will Each College Football Team Travel This Season?

Photo by Jason Mowry/Getty Images

The 2025 NCAA college football season is set to bring dramatic shifts in travel demands for teams across the country. With recent conference realignments, schools are now facing longer journeys to away games.

Using the full 2025 schedule and stadium coordinates, we analyzed the round-trip distances each team will travel when playing on the road. Distances were computed based on the geolocation of each school’s home stadium.

Collectively, 601,303 miles will be covered amongst all D1 college football teams.

Top 20 CFB Teams Traveling the Most in 2025/26

Hawaii once again tops the rankings (understandably!).

Stanford comes in second for total travel distance, moving up from fourth overall last year.

Rank Team Total Distance to Cover (miles) – 2025
1 Hawai’i 14,812
2 Stanford 11,762
3 Oregon 8,371
4 Washington State 8,194
5 Sam Houston 7,981
6 California 7,872
7 UCLA 7,610
8 LSU 7,416
9 USC 7,298
10 Army 7,159
11 Utah State 7,068
12 Washington 7,041
13 Kansas State 6,692
14 San Diego State 6,670
15 Wyoming 6,512
16 West Virginia 6,296
17 Nevada 6,187
18 Missouri State 6,183
19 UCF 6,038
20 Florida International 5,957

Which Teams Have The Biggest Drop Off In Travel Distance? (2024 vs 2025)

Team Total Distance to Cover (mi) – 2024 Total Distance to Cover (mi) – 2025 Difference (mi) Year with More Travel
Delaware State 5,077 302 -4,775 2024
Northern Iowa 4,246 678 -3,568 2024
UCLA 11,025 7,610 -3,415 2024
Virginia Tech 4,220 1,100 -3,120 2024
Georgia Tech 5,907 3,138 -2,769 2024
Florida State 6,514 3,752 -2,762 2024
Florida Atlantic 6,228 3,637 -2,591 2024
Miami 5,761 3,277 -2,484 2024
California 10,330 7,872 -2,458 2024
Houston Christian 3,465 1,344 -2,121 2024
New Mexico 6,508 4,402 -2,106 2024
Kennesaw State 5,119 3,016 -2,103 2024
Baylor 4,112 2,180 -1,932 2024
Missouri 3,300 1,545 -1,755 2024
UNLV 6,645 4,989 -1,656 2024
Robert Morris 1,638 62 -1,576 2024
Louisville 3,793 2,270 -1,523 2024
NC State 3,005 1,696 -1,309 2024
Southern Miss 2,479 1,242 -1,237 2024
Washington 8,282 7,041 -1,241 2024

How Far Will The 2025 NCAAF Championship Favorites Have To Travel?

Oregon has to travel the most out of the favorites to win the NCAAF Championship, with a total travel distance of 8,371 miles.

LSU comes next, with 7,416 miles to travel. Last year’s champion, Ohio State have only 3,042 miles  to travel across the regular season by comparison.

Team Winner Odds Total Distance to Cover (mi) – 2025
Oregon +500 8,371
LSU +550 7,416
Notre Dame +650 4,747
Texas +750 4,358
Penn State +800 3,773
Ohio State +1400 3,042
Clemson +1400 1,568
Alabama +1949 1,499
Tennessee +2000 1,352
Georgia +2000 940

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For the breakdown for every D1 team, please see the full dataset here. All figures in the dataset have been converted to miles.

Methodology

Data Collection

The official schedule for the 2024-25 NCAA college football season was extracted from the ESPN college football schedule.

An automated Python script was developed to scrape and collect the schedule data for all weeks of the season. The script retrieved details for each game, including the teams involved, game dates, and locations.

Only data for D-1 games was considered.

Data Transformation

Cleaning: The raw data underwent cleaning to remove any irrelevant or incomplete entries. This included filtering out non-game events and ensuring each game entry had accurate team names and locations.

Geocoding: Each game’s location was marked with geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude). This was done using Python’s geocoding libraries to convert stadium names or cities into precise coordinates.

First Game Consideration: The first game of the season, which was played in Dublin, Ireland, was noted as a special case due to its international location, requiring significant travel for both participating teams.

Data Analysis

Distance Calculation: The Haversine formula, implemented in Python, was used to calculate the great-circle distance between the coordinates of the home and away locations for each game. This formula provides an accurate measure of the distance between two points on the Earth’s surface.

Total Travel Distance: The total travel distance for each team was calculated by summing up the distances for all their away games during the season.

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