WVU hopes Big 12 can help with how far away Big 12 is from WVU

West Virginia is a long way from the Big 12’s other membership institutions, which are apparently scattered throughout the midwest. Somebody really should have brought this up during the conference realignment exploration phase, but as it is, WVU is stuck just now realizing how painful the travel for its various varsity programs can be during conference play.

The Mountaineers are going to try to work out some adjustments to their travel schedules with the league in an effort to make things easier on their athletics department, if possible. The fact of the matter though is that the Mountaineers face a 1,700-mile round trip -- at minimum -- regardless of their Big 12 destination, so there’s only so much that scheduling adjustments can do.

And that’s the price of modern conference realignment. Nothing has to make sense geographically or logistically, because football, so this is the sort of thing that can happen. West Virginia is far better off from an overall financial standpoint in the Big 12 -- better to have longer travel times than be stuck in a moribund league with relatively miniscule per-school payouts -- but it took a year of doing rather than simply conceptualizing for the Mountaineers to realize that this whole thing kinda stinks.

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