College Football Talk

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Travel costs bogging down athletic budgets

(from Sporting News) The athletic administrators at Hawaii have spent decades figuring out how to travel cheap. Every trip is trans-Pacific for the Warriors, which makes getting to and from road games second only to recruiting as the school's top sports challenge.

In these difficult economic times, travel has become even more of an issue. Recent jumps in fuel prices, teamed with local carrier Aloha Airlines' declaring bankruptcy in March, have wreaked havoc on Hawaii's budget. The school will spend close to $3.2 million on travel this coming school year, an increase of more than $450,000 over its non-Sugar Bowl expenses from last year.

"We're scrambling," says Carl Clapp, associate athletic director for administrative services. "It's getting very difficult for us because, like a lot of others, we're not in the best economy. And ours might be a little worse."

Hawaii isn't the only school that needs to juggle numbers to make all its trips this year. Bowling Green officials will spend about $183,000 just to show up for September football games at Boise State and Wyoming. Cincinnati's football and volleyball teams will make trips to Hawaii before New Year's Day. Fresno State will fly more than 2,300 miles (each way) twice to face Rutgers and Toledo.

In the short term, creative budgeting and more aggressive fundraising can counter the rising costs. But continued economic issues could shake up how some smaller Division I schools play sports. Bowling Green's Jim Elsasser, assistant athletic director for internal affairs, says his women's golf team plans to save dollars by slashing a tournament from its annual March trip to warmer weather. And WAC commissioner Karl Benson, whose nine-team league has the nation's largest geographic footprint even without Hawaii, says the higher costs might prompt his schools' presidents to look harder at expanding.
Recent jumps in fuel prices, teamed with local carrier Aloha Airlines' declaring bankruptcy, have wreaked havoc on Hawaii's budget.

"It's going to have to become a topic of conversation," he says. "If we go to a 10-team basketball league and pick the right school, we can have travel partners and eliminate some of those single-game trips from Louisiana Tech to, say, Boise."

The drastic moves remain speculation for most schools and conferences except Hawaii, which has seen travel cost increases take an extra 1 percent of its 2008-09 budget. To help cover expenses, the football team will reach road games by flying commercial from Honolulu to California, then pick up a charter to cover the mainland portion of the journey. UH last resorted to that tactic when it faced Alabama in the 2006 opener; it will happen six times this year, including for the season opener at Florida. (The rest of Hawaii's teams always fly commercial.)

But the new setup doesn't solve all the problems. A round-trip ticket to California, once valued between $450 and $485, now costs more than $700, Clapp says. Continued increases could lead the Warriors to further measures, such as reducing the size of travel parties or following Bowling Green's lead of cutting scheduled nonconference trips.

"We don't want to do anything to hurt our teams' abilities to compete and chances to win," Clapp says. "At the same time, we have to evaluate everything. It's all on the table."

The crunch, of course, has hit most handicapped schools outside the six BCS conferences. It's no sweat for Ohio State to pack its band, cheerleaders, administration and football team and ship them to California for a game against USC in September. But such a trip for neighbors Toledo and Bowling Green, which reap far less from college football's postseason payouts, puts a much bigger dent in the bottom line.

And that logic follows all around the country. LSU can overcome hurdles Louisiana Tech can't. Tennessee can make trips that would financially cripple Middle Tennessee State. And the more costs rise, the more stark those realities become.

"Our budgets don't grow at the same rate as those other schools', " Bowling Green's Elsasser says. "There's a widening gap between the BCS schools and everybody else, and it's going to continue to increase."

The travel costs hurt in other areas, too, from funding official visits to paying for coaches to visit high schools and camps to recruit. And it's not just flying that punishes wallets; coaches are turning in far more expensive rental car, meal and lodging receipts than they were five years ago.

Like in every other pocket of society, the hope is that things change soon and that college athletics travel becomes a bit more affordable. Until then, the small schools around the country will keep rolling their pennies, topping off their tanks and scrounging for more money to get to the stadium and back.