Penn State's 2024 Travel Schedule Ranks 6th Among Big Ten Teams

A new study explored how far each Big Ten football team will travel this season. The Nittany Lions rank second in most miles flown among legacy conference teams.

A general view of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum before the USC Trojans Spring Game. / Kiyoshi Mio-USA TODAY Sports

As one of three Big Tens teams on the East Coast, Penn State is bound to cover more miles than most teams in the conference in 2024. But just how far will the Nittany Lions travel in comparison with their conference rivals, including those four new teams from the East Coast? Here’s a look at the Penn State football travel schedule and how it compares with the conference’s other 17 teams, with data provided by bookies.com. 

Penn State

With long road trips to USC, Minnesota and Wisconsin, Penn State will travel 8,602.46 miles in 2024, the sixth-most of any Big Ten team, according to the report. The Nittany Lions will play five total away games, with trips to West Virginia and Purdue rounding out the list, and will travel across time zones 10 times in the process.

Penn State’s Week 6 game at USC obviously will be the team’s longest trip, stretching 4,494.72 miles round trip from State College (or Harrisburg, from where the team usually flies) to Los Angeles Meanwhile, the Nittany Lions’ season opener against the Mountaineers will account for 273.52 miles — the program’s shortest road trip of 2024.

The rest of the Big Ten

To no surprise, the four West Coast teams will travel farther than any other conference team this season. UCLA is set to travel a Big Ten-most 22,048.04 miles in 2024, traversing time zones 26 times. To put into perspective just how brutal the Bruins’ travel schedule is, their shortest trip to Nebraska is 1,912.62 miles round trip.

Washington, USC, Oregon and Rutgers round out the rest of the top five, respectively, with the Nittany Lions traveling 675.76 miles round trip less than the Scarlet Knights. Indiana, Purdue, Michigan and Ohio State — all with only four away games in 2024 — will travel the least, a potential advantage compared to the hectic schedules of the Bruins and others.

As Penn State coach James Franklin noted earlier this year, travel schedules will present challenges across the conference.

"If you look at whether it's major college football or you look at the NFL, you look at the teams traveling west and what their records have been like compared to the teams that are traveling east and what their records are like, and be very honest and thorough about that and what we're going to have to do to put us in the best position to make those trips and be successful — that's things as a football program that we need to look at," Franklin said. "That's things as an athletic department that we need to look at and make sure we're making the right choices that put our players and our
program in the best chance to be successful.

"I'll never forget when I was at the University of Maryland. ... We scheduled a home-and-home with Cal. The [Maryland athletic director] had come from Cal. They came to our place, and I think we played them at 11 a.m., and that went very well for the East Coast team, the Maryland Terrapins, at this time. Then the next year we went out there, and I think it was a 7 p.m. game, and that went very well from the team from California. So just taking all those things into consideration and having a plan of best practices based on NFL teams and what they do, college teams and what we need to do to be successful, that's probably where a lot of our time is being spent on what is the best way to do this while still making sure that our guys are student-athletes and getting that type of experience."

For more on Big Ten travel, check out the report from bookies.com.

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Seth Engle has covered Penn State football and men’s basketball for the past four years, most recently serving as the football editor of the Daily Collegian. His work has appeared in the Associated Press, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PennLive, Centre Daily Times and more. Follow him on X (or Twitter) @bigsengtweets.