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Pac-12 travel partners -- please explain how this works

hokiehead

hokiehead

Gobbler on the Mountain
Club Member
Please explain how the concept of "travel partners" works. I did first-order google searching and didn't find anything that explained it well.


I was under the (likely naive) impression that the goal of 'conference travel partners' was to reduce cost, but I don't understand how that works. CU and Utah are supposed to be 'travel partners' and right now they're both in the state of Washington. Tonight, CU plays at WSU and Utah plays at UW-West; Saturday they swap. How exactly does this save either school money? I'm assuming Pac-12 basketball teams generally travel on commercial flights (correct me if I'm wrong) -- unless CU travels first to SLC, then both schools share a charter flight to either Spokane or SEA, then split up again, play their respective two games and meet back at a common Washington airport to go back East, I don't see it. I haven't done the actual cost analysis, but even if you don't assign any value to stakeholder travel time, I have a hard time believing this is more cost effective than CU flying to Spokane out of DIA and Utah to SEA flying out of SLC.

Now, having CU play WSU and Washington in the same road trip makes complete sense. I just don't see how either school saves money by having both do it in the same week.


The only benefit that I see from the concept of "travel partners" is simplicity of scheduling, which has to get much easier under this model -- if that's the only reason, the term maybe should be termed "scheduling partners".

If anyone can shed light, thanks in advance. I'm probably missing some very basic point.
 
You are looking at it backward. We save money by traveling to Washington and playing both Washington and Washington State in one trip instead of playing Washington on Weds and say UCLA on Sat, then in a few weeks play WSU and say CAL. We fly to Washington play WSU, fly to Seattle and just stay there.
 
I got that part. What I don't understand is how either CU or Utah (or the Pac-12) save money by doing it at the same time.

tante said:
You are looking at it backward. We save money by traveling to Washington and playing both Washington and Washington State in one trip.
Click to expand...
 
And last week Oregon was in Boulder while Oregon State was in SLC. And when Oregon State was in Boulder, Oregon was in SLC.

The whole travel partner concept make sense to you now?
 
hokiehead said:
I got that part. What I don't understand is how either CU or Utah (or the Pac-12) save money by doing it at the same time.
Click to expand...

it is when teams comes here that they save money. The model really doesn't work for Colorado and Utah very well, but imagine a place like LA, you are taking a bus between the venues.
 
only from an "ease of scheduling" perspective, not a "cost savings" perspective.


Jens1893 said:
And last week Oregon was in Boulder while Oregon State was in SLC. And when Oregon State was in Boulder, Oregon was in SLC.

The whole travel partner concept make sense to you now?
Click to expand...
 
hokiehead said:
I got that part. What I don't understand is how either CU or Utah (or the Pac-12) save money by doing it at the same time.
Click to expand...

They do not, but we do save money by only having to go to Washington, LA, the Bay Area or Arizona once. If, say, Washington was partnered with Arizona, CU would have to fly from Boulder to Tucson to Seattle to Boulder, whereas by having Arizona partnered with Arizona State, we only have to travel from Boulder to Tempe to Tucson to Boulder.
 
if you look at other pairings —ucla and usc, cal and 'furd, osu and orgegon, and even UofA and ASU, those are all bus trips to the 2nd game for visiting teams. The wed-sun game scheduling probably negates any cost savings but I would bet the geographical pairings are probably still more convenient than figuring out an alternative.
 
OK, that makes sense.... if we change the term "travel partners" to "destination partners". You're saying there is no financial win in two schools traveling together (e.g. CU and Utah on this trip), but there is a financial win for their opponents (e.g. Oregon and OSU coming to the Rocky Mountain region at same time). The consequence of this is that these "destination partners" end up making similar road trips due to schedule logistics, not because of a financial benefit.

thanks -- I got it now. sorry to be slow.

Jens1893 said:
They do not, but we do save money by only having to go to Washington, LA, the Bay Area or Arizona once. If, say, Washington was partnered with Arizona, CU would have to fly from Boulder to Tucson to Seattle to Boulder, whereas by having Arizona partnered with Arizona State, we only have to travel from Boulder to Tempe to Tucson to Boulder.
Click to expand...
 
hokiehead said:
only from an "ease of scheduling" perspective, not a "cost savings" perspective.
Click to expand...

there are a few places where the travel partner thing really works where you are taking a bus between schools.

ASU-UA
USC-UCLA
Cal-Stanford
UO-OSU

and a few places where the distance still requires a plane ride.

CU-Utah
UW-WSU

so no school gets a benefit when they come play CU and Utah or Washington/WSU, but they get a benefit for the four schools pairs that are listed above
 
PuebloBuff said:
if you look at other pairings —ucla and usc, cal and 'furd, osu and orgegon, and even UofA and ASU, those are all bus trips to the 2nd game for visiting teams. The wed-sun game scheduling probably negates any cost savings but I would bet the geographical pairings are probably still more convenient than figuring out an alternative.
Click to expand...
I didn't realize this game was tonight until I saw a Mark Johnson tweet yesterday about being in Spoakane. I think we had ONE Wed P12 game all of last year. I looked at the schedule, we have a bunch more this year.

From an academic standpoint, this is more disruptive obviously. I liked the Thur night games more. I already had to stay up to late to watch them being on the east coast and usually Friday is an easier day at the office than Thursday.
 
so since CU plays on Wed. and Sunday, will they stay all 3 days in Wash. state? It's probably cheaper to fly home and back again than put up the whole team and staff in a hotel for 3 extra days. Mayve since Pullman is so far it doesn't matter in this case?
 
El Gringo said:
so since CU plays on Wed. and Sunday, will they stay all 3 days in Wash. state? It's probably cheaper to fly home and back again than put up the whole team and staff in a hotel for 3 extra days. Mayve since Pullman is so far it doesn't matter in this case?
Click to expand...

Not in Pullman on this trip. We are in Spokane.
 
Anyone called this guy stupid yet? Stupid thread, op.
 
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