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Almost no word in the English language makes a college football fan more defensive than the L-word: luck.

We weren’t lucky to have a great turnover margin — our coaches are just really good at emphasizing ball security! We’re tougher than everyone else — that’s why we recovered all those fumbles!

We weren’t lucky to win all those close games — we’re clutch! Our coaches know how to press all the right buttons! Our quarterback is a cool customer!

We weren’t lucky to have fewer injuries than everyone else — our strength-and-conditioning coach is the best in America! And again: We’re just tougher!

As loath as we may be to admit it, a large percentage of a given college football season — with its small overall sample of games — is determined by the bounce of a pointy ball, the bend of a ligament and the whims of fate. Certain teams will end up with an unsustainably good turnover margin that turns on them the next year. Certain teams (often the same ones) will enjoy a great run of close-game fortune based on some combination of great coaching, sturdy quarterback play, timely special teams contributions … and massive amounts of unsustainable randomness. Certain teams will keep their starting lineups mostly intact for 12 or more games while another is watching its depth chart change dramatically on a week-to-week basis.

As we prepare for the 2025 college football season, it’s worth stepping back and looking at who did, and didn’t, get the bounces in 2024. Just because Lady Luck was (or wasn’t) on your side one year, doesn’t automatically mean your fortunes will flip the next, but that’s often how these things go. Be it turnovers, close-game fortune or injuries, let’s talk about the teams that were dealt the best and worst hands last fall.

Jump to a section:
Turnover luck | Close games luck
Injuries and general shuffling | Turnaround candidates

Turnover luck

In last year’s ACC championship game, Clemson bolted to a 24-7 halftime lead, then white-knuckled it to the finish. SMU came back to tie the score at 31 with only 16 seconds left, but Nolan Hauser‘s 56-yard field goal at the buzzer gave the Tigers a 34-31 victory and a spot in 2024’s College Football Playoff at Alabama’s expense.

In the first series of the game, Clemson’s T.J. Parker pulled a perfect sack-and-strip of SMU QB Kevin Jennings, forcing and falling on a loose ball at the SMU 33-yard line. Clemson scored two plays later to take a 7-0 lead. Late in the first quarter, Khalil Barnes picked off a Jennings pass near midfield, ending what could have become a scoring threat with one more first down. A few minutes later, Clemson’s Cade Klubnik fumbled at the end of a 14-yard gain, but tight end Jake Briningstool recovered it at midfield, preventing another potential scoring threat from developing. (Klubnik fumbled seven times in the 2024 season but lost only one of them.)

Early in the third quarter, after SMU cut Clemson’s lead to 24-14, David Eziomume fumbled the ensuing kickoff at the Clemson 6, but teammate Keith Adams Jr. recovered it right before two SMU players pounced.

Over 60 minutes, both teams fumbled twice, and Clemson defended (intercepted or broke up) eight passes to SMU’s seven. On average, 50% of fumbles are lost and about 21% of passes defended become INTs, so Clemson’s expected turnover margin in this game was plus-0.2 (because of the extra pass defended). The Tigers’ actual turnover margin was plus-2, a difference of 1.8 turnovers in a game they barely won.

Clemson was obviously a solid team in 2024, but the Tigers probably wouldn’t have reached the CFP without turnovers luck. For the season, they fumbled 16 times but lost only three, and comparing their expected (based on the averages above) and actual turnover margins, almost no one benefited more from the randomness of a bouncing ball.

It probably isn’t a surprise to see that, of last year’s 12 playoff teams, eight benefited from positive turnovers luck, and six were at plus-3.3 or higher. You’ve got to be lucky and good to win, right?

You aren’t often lucky for two straight years, though. It might be noteworthy to point out that, of the teams in Mark Schlabach’s Way-Too-Early 2025 rankings, five were in the top 20 in terms of turnovers luck: No. 5 Georgia, No. 7 Clemson, No. 9 BYU, No. 11 Iowa State and No. 17 Indiana (plus two others from his Teams Also Considered list: Army and Baylor).

It’s also noteworthy to point out that three teams on Schlabach’s list — No. 6 Oregon, No. 8 LSU and No. 15 SMU — ranked in the triple-digits in terms of turnovers luck. Oregon started the season 13-0 without the benefit of bounces. For that matter, Auburn, a team on the Also Considered list, ranked 125th in turnovers luck in a season that saw the Tigers go just 1-3 in one-score finishes. There might not have been a more what-could-have-been team in the country than Hugh Freeze’s Tigers.


Close games

One of my favorite tools in my statistical toolbox is what I call postgame win expectancy. The idea is to take all of a game’s key, predictive stats — all the things that end up feeding into my SP+ rankings — and basically toss them into the air and say, “With these stats, you could have expected to win this game X% of the time.”

Alabama‘s 40-35 loss to Vanderbilt on Oct. 5 was one of the most impactful results of the CFP race. It was also one of the least likely results of the season in terms of postgame win expectancy. Bama averaged 8.8 yards per play to Vandy’s 5.6, generated a 56% success rate* to Vandy’s 43% and scored touchdowns on all four of its trips into the red zone. It’s really hard to lose when you do all of that — in fact, the Crimson Tide’s postgame win expectancy was a whopping 98.5%. (You can see all postgame win expectancy data here)

(* Success rate: how frequently an offense is gaining at least 50% of necessary yardage on first down, 70% on second and 100% on third and fourth. It is one of the more reliable and predictive stats you’ll find, and it’s a big part of SP+.)

Vandy managed to overcome these stats in part because of two of the most perfect bounces you’ll ever see. In the first, Jalen Milroe had a pass batted at the line, and it deflected high into the air and, eventually, into the arms of Randon Fontenette, who caught it on the run and raced 29 yards for a touchdown and an early 13-0 lead.

In the second half, with Bama driving to potentially take the lead, Miles Capers sacked Milroe and forced a fumble; the ball sat on the ground for what felt like an eternity before Yilanan Ouattara outwrestled a Bama lineman for it. Instead of trailing, Vandy took over near midfield and scored seven plays later. It took turnovers luck and unlikely key-play execution — despite a 43% success rate, Diego Pavia and the Commodores went 12-for-18 on third down and 1-for-1 on fourth — for Vandy to turn a 1.5% postgame win expectancy into a victory. It also wasn’t Alabama’s only incredibly unlikely loss: The Tide were at 87.8% to beat Michigan in the ReliaQuest Bowl but fell 19-13.

(Ole Miss can feel the Tide’s pain: The Rebels were at 76.0% postgame win expectancy against Kentucky and 73.7% against Florida. There was only a 6% chance that they would lose both games, and even going 1-1 would have likely landed them a CFP bid. They lost both.)

Adding up each game’s postgame win expectancy is a nice way of seeing how many games a team should have won on average. I call this a team’s second-order win total. Alabama was at 10.7 second-order wins but went 9-4. That was one of the biggest differences of the season. Somehow, however, Iron Bowl rival Auburn was even more unfortunate.

Based solely on stats, Arkansas State should have won about four games, and Auburn should have won about eight. Instead, the Red Wolves went 8-5 and the Tigers went 5-7.

Comparing win totals to these second-order wins is one of the surest ways of identifying potential turnaround stories for the following season. In 2023, 15 teams had second-order win totals at least one game higher than their actual win totals — meaning they suffered from poor close-game fortune. Ten of those 15 teams saw their win totals increase by at least two games in 2024, including East Carolina (from 2-10 to 8-5), TCU (5-7 to 9-4), Pitt (3-9 to 7-6), Boise State (8-6 to 12-2) and Louisiana (6-7 to 10-4). On average, these 15 teams improved by 1.9 wins.

On the flip side, 19 teams overachieved their second-order win totals by at least 1.0 wins in 2023. This list includes both of 2023’s national title game participants, Washington and Michigan. The Huskies and Wolverines sank from a combined 29-1 in 2023 to 14-12 in 2024, and it could have been even worse. Michigan overachieved again, going 8-5 despite a second-order win total of 6.0. Other 2023 overachievers weren’t so lucky. Oklahoma State (from 10-4 to 3-9), Wyoming (from 9-4 to 3-9), Northwestern (from 8-5 to 4-8) and NC State (from 9-4 to 6-7) all won more games than the stats expected in 2023, and all of them crumpled to some degree in 2024. On average, the 19 overachieving teams regressed by 1.9 wins last fall.

It’s worth keeping in mind that several teams in Schlabach’s Way-Too-Early Top 25 — including No. 6 Oregon, No. 8 LSU, No. 11 Iowa State, No. 13 Illinois and, yes, No. 21 Michigan — all exceeded statistical expectations in wins last season, as did Also Considered teams like Army, Duke, Missouri and Texas Tech. The fact that Oregon and LSU overachieved while suffering from poor turnovers luck is (admittedly) rather unlikely and paints a conflicting picture.

Meanwhile, one should note that three Way-Too-Early teams — No. 12 Alabama, No. 23 Miami and No. 25 Ole Miss (plus Washington and, of course, Auburn from the Also Considered list) — all lost more games than expected last season. With just a little bit of good fortune, they could prove to be awfully underrated.


Injuries and general shuffling

Injuries are hard to define in college football — coaches are frequently canny in the information they do and do not provide, and with so many teams in FBS, it’s impossible to derive accurate data regarding how many games were missed due to injury.

We can glean quite a bit from starting lineups, however. Teams with lineups that barely changed throughout the season were probably pretty happy with their overall results, while teams with ever-changing lineups likely succumbed to lots of losses. Below, I’ve ranked teams using a simple ratio: I compared (a) the number of players who either started every game or started all but one for a given team to (b) the number of players who started only one or two games, likely as a stopgap. If you had far more of the former, your team likely avoided major injury issues and, with a couple of major exceptions, thrived. If you had more of the latter, the negative effects were probably pretty obvious.

Despite the presence of 1-11 Purdue and 2-10 Kennesaw State near the top of the list — Purdue fielded one of the worst power conference teams in recent memory and barely could blame injury for its issues — you can still see a decent correlation between a positive ratio and positive results. The six teams with a ratio of at least 2.8 or above went a combined 62-22 in 2024, while the teams with a 0.5 ratio or worse went 31-56.

Seven of nine conference champions had a ratio of at least 1.3, and 11 of the 12 CFP teams were at 1.44 or higher (five were at 2.6 or higher). Indiana, the most shocking of CFP teams, was second on the list above; epic disappointments like Oklahoma and, especially, Florida State were near the bottom. (The fact that Georgia won the SEC and reached the CFP despite a pretty terrible injury ratio speaks volumes about the depth Kirby Smart has built in Athens. Of course, the Dawgs also enjoyed solid turnovers luck.)


Major turnaround candidates

It’s fair to use this information as a reason for skepticism about teams like Indiana (turnovers luck and injuries luck), Clemson (turnovers luck), Iowa State (close-games luck), Penn State (injuries luck) or Sam Houston (all of the above, plus a coaching change), but let’s end on an optimistic note instead. Here are five teams that could pretty easily enjoy a big turnaround if Lady Luck is a little kinder.

Auburn Tigers: Auburn enjoyed a better success rate than its opponents (44.7% to 38.5%) and made more big plays as well (8.9% of plays gained 20-plus yards versus 5.7% for opponents). That makes it awfully hard to lose! But the Tigers made exactly the mistake they couldn’t make and managed to lose games with 94%, 76% and 61% postgame win expectancy. There’s nothing saying this was all bad luck, but even with a modest turnaround in fortune, the Tigers will have a very high ceiling in 2025.

Florida Gators: The Gators improved from 41st to 20th in SP+ and from 5-7 to 8-5 overall despite starting three quarterbacks and 12 different DBs and ranking 132nd on the list above. That says pretty spectacular things about their overall upside, especially considering their improved experience levels on the O-line, in the secondary and the general optimism about sophomore quarterback DJ Lagway.

Florida Atlantic Owls: Only one team ranked 111th or worse in all three of the tables above — turnovers luck (111th), second-order win difference (121st) and injury ratio (131st). You could use this information to make the case that the Owls shouldn’t have fired head coach Tom Herman, or you could simply say that new head coach Zach Kittley is pretty well-positioned to get some bounces and hit the ground running.

Florida State Seminoles: There was evidently plenty of poor fortune to go around in the Sunshine State last season, and while Mike Norvell’s Seminoles suffered an epic hangover on the field, they also didn’t get a single bounce: They were 129th in turnovers luck, 99th in second-order win difference and 110th in injury ratio. Norvell has brought in new coordinators and plenty of new players, and the Noles are almost guaranteed to jump up from 2-10. With a little luck, that jump could be a pretty big one.

Utah Utes: Along with UCF, Utah was one of only two teams to start four different quarterbacks in 2024. The Utes were also among only four teams to start at least 11 different receivers or tight ends and among five teams to start at least nine defensive linemen. If you’re looking for an easy explanation for how they fell from 65th to 96th in offensive SP+ and from 8-5 to 5-7 overall, that’s pretty succinct and telling.

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Delayed flights, missed meals and little sleep: How college teams adjusted to cross-country travel

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Delayed flights, missed meals and little sleep: How college teams adjusted to cross-country travel

IF THERE WERE ever a moment when Oregon State baseball coach Mitch Canham would have had reason to second-guess his decision for the Beavers to play an independent schedule in the wake of the Pac-12’s collapse, it might have been in the early hours of March 31.

Oregon State had just completed a three-game series at Nebraska and was waiting out a four-hour delay in the Denver airport. The team still had a two-and-a-half-hour flight to go, and it would take at least another two hours after that to get on the bus in Portland and drive home to Corvallis, just as the rest of the town would be starting their day.

It started ordinarily enough, but this Sunday quickly devolved into a comedy of errors.

There was a standard breakfast before the noon game, which had a three-hour window to be played before the team needed to leave for the Lincoln airport to catch its flight. Things started to go off the rails in the bottom of the seventh inning. That’s when OSU gave up nine runs before another in the eighth to lose 16-7, after which it found out a popular local barbecue joint had cancelled the team’s postgame meal.

The Beavers didn’t have enough time to make other food arrangements — or shower — before they needed to be at the airport, so they took their chances at finding food at the terminal. There turned out to be only one option, a sandwich spot, but as the Beavers arrived, the place’s only two workers got into a loud argument.

“We’re trying to get a sandwich right before we get on the plane, because we haven’t eaten and they just start going at each other,” Canham said. “One guy is like, ‘I quit.’ And we say, “No, not yet, man. How about we get 30 sandwiches real quick and then you quit?'”

The plea didn’t work, leaving this increasingly hungry college baseball team without a meal for another couple hours before the members would have a chance to grab food during their layover in Denver. And when they were delayed, it felt like the team was living an elaborate prank.

“We look at each other, we laugh and alright, what’s next?” Canham said. “How do we make the best of this?”

If there was any consolation for Canham as he tried to get some sleep in the airport that night, it came when he found out several of his players crossed paths in the terminal with the Cal baseball team. Their former Pac-12 rival — now playing in the ACC — was on its way back from Louisville, and its flight wasn’t going to leave until 6 a.m.

These are no longer just isolated inconveniences, they’re the new normal.

Oregon State’s long trek home was more than just a rough travel day, it was a glimpse of the logistical challenges many programs now face. For Oregon State, Cal, UCLA and other West Coast teams, this year of realignment has brought a constant grind to remain at the highest levels of college athletics.


WHEN THE DUST settled on the latest round of college sports realignment, few schools bore as much responsibility as UCLA. Along with crosstown rival USC, the Bruins were a main driver in breaking up the Pac-12 when they opted to leave for the Big Ten.

For football, the situation was different. 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.

But what would it mean for nonrevenue sports such as women’s soccer?

“My first reaction was obviously a bit of surprise,” said UCLA women’s soccer coach Margueritte Aozasa, who led the Bruins to the 2022 national title in her first year as coach. “I was on a recruiting call when the news dropped, and I was like, ‘Oh.’ But at the same time, I was pleased because the Big Ten is well-positioned in the future of collegiate sports.”

Aozasa and her staff soon realized that while the number of trips on UCLA’s 2024 schedule didn’t change much from the Pac-12 days, the cross-country flights added significant fatigue.

“The biggest adjustment we’ll make going forward is investing more in recovery,” Aozasa said. “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.”

To track that toll, UCLA relied on GPS wearables and readiness surveys, which showed higher levels of fatigue and soreness than usual. The data helped confirm what coaches had anticipated, that there would need to be different recovery processes than when most of the games were confined to the West Coast.

Some early-season injuries also added to the strain. Players logged more minutes than expected, and the cumulative wear of flights, hotels and unfamiliar fields only added to the challenge.

“It wasn’t just the travel,” Aozasa said. “We were very shorthanded early on, so that stretch of games — Kentucky, Tennessee, then two back-to-back Big Ten trips — it really tested us.”

The impact was felt most acutely during the Big Ten conference tournament, which was already a new concept as the Pac-12 didn’t have a postseason conference tournament. UCLA won the tournament, but doing so meant the Bruins had to play three games in six days — including a snow delay in Minnesota — as a precursor to the NCAA tournament.

“We definitely felt it,” Aozasa said. “Playing three games in six days away and then coming back was not easy. It’s something we, as a staff, have to adjust to.”

UCLA received a No. 2 seed in the tournament, but was eliminated in the second round.

Aozasa expects that with time the sort of issues they dealt with for the first time this season won’t feel like issues at all, and they’ll just be part of life in big-time college athletics. The team will be able to learn from the experiences each season and apply those lessons down the road.

“Last year was probably the only time we’ll have to plan a nonconference schedule before we had the conference dates,” Aozasa said. “This year, we’re back on track. We have our home and away opponents and the dates set, so we can plan more thoughtfully.”

One of the main topics for concern as realignment dispersed West Coast teams across the country was the potential impact on academics. And while that remains top of mind for many coaches, Aozasa said the adjustment was easier than she expected.

For a sport like women’s soccer, the number of missed classes didn’t really change. Yes, their flights were longer, but the number of travel days was similar.

“If we were having this conversation seven or eight years ago, it would be a different story,” she said. “But now, with how used to remote learning everyone is, our players didn’t have to make any major adjustments on the academic side.”

There was also the benefit of being exposed to new places.

“We had players who had never been to the Midwest,” Aozasa said. “They got to see college towns for the first time, experience a pumpkin patch that wasn’t in a parking lot. The girls loved it.”

For all the talk of challenges, Aozasa said she was proud of how her team adapted.

“We have to be adaptable,” Aozasa said. “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.”

Aozasa’s positive outlook on competing in the Big Ten wasn’t a stance shared on campus by men’s basketball coach Mick Cronin, who at various points this past season expressed frustration with UCLA‘s new life on the road.

Following a home win against Iowa in January, Cronin was asked about what kind of impact the travel to the West Coast might have had on Iowa.

“Wear and tear on them? Is that a joke? Please tell me that’s a joke,” Cronin said. “We have to go back [East] four times. Oh, the Big Ten teams get to come to Los Angeles where it’s 70 degrees one time a year. They don’t even have to switch hotels. [UCLA and USC] are 12 miles apart, are you kidding me? Please tell me you’re kidding me.”

Cronin’s rant went on.

“We’ve seen the Statue of Liberty twice in the last three weeks while we were landing. We also saw the Capitol Building,” Cronin said. “And we’ve still got to go back, and then we’ve got to go back for the Big Ten tournament. They do it one time.”

By the time UCLA’s season was over, 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%.

Still, UCLA finished tied for fourth in the Big Ten during the regular season and earned a No. 7 seed in the NCAA tournament. After winning their first-round game against Utah State 72-46, the Bruins bowed out in the second round with a 67-58 loss to second-seeded Tennessee.

With the loss marking the end to a long, often frustrating season, Cronin delivered another memorable round of travel critiques in the postgame news conference.

“Right now guys, it’s 12:40 a.m. and our season just ended,” he said. “Right now my biggest concern is how bad the seats are on [our Allegiant Air] flight, on that terrible plane we’re going to have to fly home tomorrow.”

Cronin’s unfiltered criticism made it clear he felt like UCLA was at a competitive disadvantage with the amount of travel his team had to do within the Big Ten compared to the conference’s longtime members.

While it should be easy to understand his point, and it is hard to argue against it, 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.

Then, of course, there is the success of the women’s basketball programs at UCLA and USC, which dealt with the same kind of travel challenges and still managed to go a combined 65-7 during the regular season and earned No. 1 seeds, before they were both eliminated by eventual champion UConn. The travel might make winning more difficult, but after one season it’s impossible to say with any confidence to what degree it makes a difference.

In 2024, the UCLA softball team played two games outside the Pacific Time Zone during the regular season — both in an early-season invitational tournament in Florida — before the NCAA tournament and its eventual trip to the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma.

This year, that number jumped to 14, including a six-game road trip that included games in Iowa, Washington D.C. and Maryland. But the results were similar. UCLA hosted in the first round and took two of three last week in a super regional at South Carolina to return to the Women’s College World Series. If there was a competitive disadvantage that came from more time on the road, it was minimal.


AFTER MOST OF the Pac-12 fled for safe haven in the Big Ten, Big 12 and, finally, the ACC, Oregon State — along with Washington State — lost the proverbial game of musical chairs.

It left Canham weighing the future of Oregon State baseball. Realignment did not leave the Beavers with many viable options to maintain their place as an elite college baseball destination.

“I looked at the possibilities and just didn’t see anything that lined up,” Canham said. “A lot of the options were conferences that typically get one bid into the postseason. And that’s not the level we want for our program or our players. We want to play the best.”

Washington State sent its baseball team to the Mountain West as an affiliate member, but that wasn’t an appealing destination for the Beavers. So, after seeking out the viability of affiliate membership elsewhere, Oregon State made a bold decision: it went independent. The Beavers are the only independent college baseball team this season, and they’ll be independent again in 2026.

The choice came with a heavy dose of uncertainty and an even heavier travel burden. Without a conference to rely on for a bulk of the scheduling, Canham spent hours on the phone, calling around to piece together a full slate of games.

“I needed an opportunity to try to fill out a schedule and see if we could make this work,” he said. “I was going to call and ask for that game to fill a complete schedule.”

While Oregon State’s ballpark, Goss Stadium, offered a premier setting, getting other teams to visit — especially late in the season during conference play — was difficult. Many preferred to keep their bye weeks at home, leaving Oregon State with little leverage to bring opponents to Corvallis.

“I assumed that everyone would want to come here and play because of the history, the ambience, just the beauty of the ballpark,” Canham said. “But for Year 1, that was not necessarily in the cards for many schools.”

The Beavers instead faced an exhausting schedule of away games, spending countless hours in airports, buses and hotel rooms. Of their 54 games this season, only 19 were at home.

It was the kind of season that tested everything: sleep schedules, nutrition, recovery. It wasn’t unusual for the team to practice on the road as late as 9 p.m. on a Thursday after a full day of travel.

Earlier this month, the team met at its facility to catch a 4 a.m. bus to get to Portland for a flight to Iowa. But the bus never showed up, leaving coaches to pack players and bags into their own cars.

“I go, ‘There’s no bus,'” Canham said. “So I said, ‘All right, everybody, coaches get your cars.’ We loaded up all the guys and drove them to the airport ourselves.”

But if any program was equipped for adversity, it was Oregon State. With three national championships in 2006, 2007 and 2018, the Beavers have long been a powerhouse in college baseball. Under former coach Pat Casey, Oregon State became one of the most respected programs in the country.

That tradition has carried on under Canham, a former Oregon State catcher who played on the 2006 and 2007 title-winning teams. He has seen firsthand what it takes to succeed on the national stage, and he is doing everything within his power to maintain that legacy.

“This is a program that’s built on toughness and resilience,” he said. “We’ve played in some of the biggest games in college baseball history, and we’re going to keep pushing to be in that conversation every year.”

Despite the chaos of this independent season, the Beavers refused to view it as a burden.

“None of these are complaints,” Canham said. “These are all blessings, how we choose to look at this. Because if we’re trying to prep these guys for going on and playing in the professional ranks, they’re going to be doing a lot of that constant travel on the road.”

In Cal’s first baseball season in the ACC, coach Mike Neu also had to reimagine his strategy to scheduling. The Bears would have to cross the country for any conference away games except against Bay Area-rival Stanford, so Neu wanted to limit the travel early on.

“Once I found everything out, the goal was, ‘Let’s play more at home knowing we’re going to travel a little bit more, and let’s leave a day earlier,'” he said.

His focus was on cutting down on travel days, reshuffling midweek games and ensuring his players had enough time to recover and adjust to different environments. Cal had been scheduled to play in a tournament in Texas, but Neu backed out of that and replaced it with local games.

In the past, Cal had always left on Thursday for road trips in the Pac-12, but that changed this year. For trips back East, the team would leave on Wednesday. The change came for a couple reasons, but largely stems from an experience Cal had traveling to Pittsburgh in 2023. For that trip, Cal’s direct Thursday flight to Pennsylvania was canceled. The team ended up having to connect and got in very late that night, without the chance to practice and get acclimated.

“That’s one of those factors that probably made the decision easier to leave on Wednesday because if that happens on Wednesday, OK, we’re going to be fine,” Neu said.

After playing mostly local games to start the season, Neu said he’ll likely replicate the plan next year, and he is confident the team could actually handle another out-of-town tournament at the start of the season or another road trip, possibly in Southern California.

“I don’t think that would be overwhelming for us,” Neu said. “I think this season has probably given me the confidence we don’t have to play every game at home in the preseason.”

Playing at home didn’t end up serving as much of an advantage, at least not in the most basic way to evaluate such things. The Bears finished the season 12-18 at home, 10-12 on the road and limped to a 9-21 record to finish in last place in the ACC. With the No. 16 seed in the ACC tournament last week, Cal won a pair of 9 a.m. ET games in Durham, North Carolina, against No. 9 Miami and No. 8 Wake Forest before being eliminated by top-seeded Georgia Tech.


THE TRAVEL TOLL was real, but — at least for Oregon State — so was the payoff. After finishing their independent season 41-12-1, the Beavers earned the No. 8 national seed in the NCAA tournament. That means they’ll host a regional in Corvallis that begins Friday and, if they advance, they would again play host, but for a super regional.

The question now is whether any of this is truly sustainable. Will the cross-country flights, missed meals and sleep-deprived nights slowly erode the competitive edge these programs have fought so hard to maintain? Will players be worn down by the mental and physical toll, or will they find ways to adapt, season after season?

For now, the realignment trend across college sports is for conferences to become more national. But with such a drastic shift, it’s fair to wonder whether, years from now, some of these nonrevenue sports might ultimately trend back in the other direction. That day won’t come soon, but the jury is still out on whether this new era of constant travel is truly the way forward, or simply a phase that college sports will eventually outgrow.

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‘Wish of the room’: SEC coaches want to play B1G

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'Wish of the room': SEC coaches want to play B1G

DESTIN, Fla. — LSU‘s Brian Kelly on Wednesday said SEC coaches favor adding one nonconference game against a Big Ten opponent in a scheduling agreement, but they “need a partner” to do it.

“We want to compete against the Big Ten,” Kelly said, following the last day of coaches meetings at the annual SEC spring meetings. “Look, the Big Ten right now holds it on the SEC. They won the last two national championships. That’s the reality of it. We want to get challenged in that regard, and we’d like to be able to get that done.

“That is up to our commissioner and the ADs to see if that can happen or not, but that’s the wish of the room.”

SEC scheduling has been a major topic of conversation this week as the league works to determine if it wants to stay at eight conference games or move to nine.

Kelly said he would favor playing nine SEC games and adding the additional Big Ten opponent. The possibility of a scheduling partnership between the two leagues developed from multiple in-person meetings of the Big Ten-SEC advisory group, but one SEC source said the topic was “dead in the water” at the commissioner level.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said there are three ways that a scheduling partnership can work: stay out of it, and let it happen naturally like it does now through athletic directors; try to facilitate more; and agree to mandate to play.

“That third one’s incredibly difficult,” Sankey said. “So I understand the position. That’s a long row to hoe to get to the end of that particular row.”

Still, Kelly said the coaches made their “voices clear” this week to their respective athletic directors and Sankey.

“You’ve got to get a partner who says we’re in for that, too,” Kelly said.

Arkansas coach Sam Pittman said the decisions should be made on what would be exciting for television and what the fans would most enjoy. Pittman said the “SEC wants us to go to nine” conference games.

“So how are we going to do it?” Pittman asked. “Are we going to go to nine, playing ourselves, and maybe invite another conference to play us on a given weekend?”

There’s an overwhelming sense this week from coaches and athletic directors that they’d like to know what the future playoff format will look like before making any scheduling decisions.

South Carolina coach Shane Beamer said the coaches didn’t vote on anything this week. He said that while he would be willing to play a Big Ten opponent along with rival Clemson, he still prioritizes the in-state rivalry over other scheduling options.

“For me, I think it’s ironclad,” Beamer said of the South Carolina-Clemson game. “There’s people above me who make that decision, but I would never want that game to go away. Rivalries and rivalry weekend are what make this sport great. … I know how important that game is to the people of South Carolina, and I don’t want that game going anywhere.”

Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz said the Big Ten has caught the SEC’s attention with Michigan and Ohio State winning the national title the past two seasons.

“It bothers us as competitors,” Drinkwitz said. “We feel like we’re the best conference in college football, and we want to make sure that the ultimate prize at the end of the year is that national championship trophy.

“We haven’t been able to do that the last two years, and I think we’re all competitive enough that’s often what we’re competing for. I don’t know if two years is a data point yet or a trend. Obviously, we have to take a look and see what we can do better.”

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Baylor DL Alex Foster, 18, dies in Miss. shooting

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Baylor DL Alex Foster, 18, dies in Miss. shooting

Baylor defensive lineman Alex Foster, 18, died early Wednesday after he was found with multiple gunshot wounds in a car in his hometown of Greenville, Mississippi, the Washington County Coroner’s Office said.

Foster redshirted the 2024 season at Baylor and went through practice this spring.

The Greenville Police Department said they responded to reports of a shooting at 12:11 a.m. Wednesday and found a single male victim in his car with multiple gunshot wounds. The man was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead about half an hour later.

Greenville Police have not released the name of the victim. No arrests have been made but the investigation is ongoing.

“We are heartbroken by the unexpected loss of Alex Foster, a beloved member of our football family,” Baylor coach Dave Aranda and athletic director Mack Rhoades said in a joint statement. “Our deepest condolences are with Alex’s family and all who loved him, as we lift them up in prayer now and in the days to come. … Alex’s memory will forever be part of our hearts and this program.”

Aranda posted a separate message on X, adding, “Our hearts are broken, and our prayers are with his family, friends and all those who loved him so deeply.”

Foster, who was listed at 6-foot-5 and 292 pounds, played high school football for St. Joseph Catholic School in Madison, Mississippi. He was an ESPN three-star recruit in the 2024 class.

The shooting was part of a “surge in violent crimes” that Greenville Mayor Errick D. Simmons said in an address threaten the community. Simmons said the city issued a curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. to curb the violence, which has included multiple shootings and “senseless killings.”

Simmons said all nightclubs and late-night establishments in the city must cease operations at midnight as part of the curfew, with a special emphasis being placed on “juvenile safety and parental accountability.”

“It’s to protect the lives and well-beings of every Greenville resident in light of this growing crisis. … we cannot stand by and let violence rip through our neighborhoods. Enough is enough,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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