College Football and Climate Change: The Impact of Conference Realignment
The departure from the warm days of summer to the crisp days of autumn also marks the return of college football season in the United States. While millions of people will gather on college campuses to tailgate, sing fight songs, and watch some exciting football action, this season will look incredibly different from years’ past. Roughly a year ago, the Pac 12 Conference, representing twelve universities across the western United States, presented a new media rights deal to its members, and due to the potential underwhelming financial payouts to member schools, all but two Pac-12 members decided to leave the conference and join new conferences. These decisions to leave the Pac-12 effectively disbanded the league and permanently altered the college football landscape.
The termination of the Pac-12 has a wide variety of consequences that extend beyond football, but one overlooked ramification is how the lack of a Pac-12 conference impacts climate change. College football conferences are primarily based on geographic region, and without a conference on the west coast, former Pac-12 schools are now scattered across the country. Now former Pac-12 teams will have to frequently fly all across the country to compete in athletics. These longer flights release substantially more greenhouse gas emissions and will considerably increase the carbon footprint of university athletic teams.
This article will provide an in-depth look at the quantifiable climate change impacts of the six Pac-12 teams that are now competing in new conferences based on the opposite side of the United States. The University of Oregon (Oregon), The University of Washington (Washington), The University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) and The University of Southern California (USC) all joined the midwest-based Big Ten Conference. Stanford University (Stanford) and University of California-Berkeley (California) both joined the ACC, which is primarily based along the Atlantic Ocean.
Comparison of Miles flown in 2023 to 2024
To begin the analysis, the total round trip distance flown to all conference away games in 2023 and 2024 was calculated for all six teams. The results, displayed in Table 1, show the staggering increases in flight miles from 2023 to 2024.
Table 1: Annual Flight Miles by University (2023 – 2024)
On average the six Pac-12 teams joining conferences across the country will fly over 10,435 miles more this upcoming season compared to last year. Stanford leads the way, traveling over 13,084 additional air miles compared to last season. The team with the smallest travel increase year over year, Oregon, will still fly an additional 8,060 miles this season. The overall air miles comparison for all six teams is cataloged in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Annual Flight Miles by University (2023 – 2024)
The best way to fully comprehend the enormous magnitude of miles these football teams are flying this season is to compare the total air miles flown to the circumference of the Earth, which is 24,902 miles. Figure 2 displays the total air miles for each team this upcoming season, relative to the distance it would take to literally travel around the entire world.
Figure 2: University's Football Team Flight Miles Relative to Earth's Circumference (2024)
On average, the six teams joining the Big Ten and Atlantic Coast Conferences will fly the equivalent of crossing 80% of the world to play four to five college football games. Notably, both Washington and Stanford will each traverse the equivalent of 91% of the Earth’s circumference this upcoming season.
Comparison of Carbon Emissions in 2023 to 2024
The increase in flight miles for college football teams changing conferences leads to a substantial increase in greenhouse gas emissions as well. To calculate carbon emissions for each team, the round trip flight distance for each conference road game was tallied by measuring the distance between the closest major airport to the team’s campus and the opponent’s stadium. From there, these flights were classified as short, medium, or long haul distances and this data was converted to metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions using the United States Environmental Protection GHG Emissions Factor Hub. The greenhouse gas emissions of each flight were summed together to determine the metric tons of CO2 released per passenger on each team for the 2024 season. Finally this number was multiplied by 180 to account for a rough estimate of the total amount of players, coaches, medical staff and other important persons who travel on the chartered flight to away games. This process was repeated for the 2023 season and the comparison results are shown in Table 2, which illustrates that on average, the six teams will increase their travel carbon emissions by 240% compared to 2023.
Table 2: Annual CO2 Emissions by University (2023 – 2024)
Overall, the six new Big Ten and Big 12 football teams will contribute approximately 2,277 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions to Earth, which is roughly 1,600 metric tons more than last season. To contextualize the magnitude of an additional 1,600 metric tons of carbon dioxide, that is equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of 209 average United States homes. In terms of carbon sequestration it would take 1,868 acres of United States forest, an area double the size of Central Park in New York City, to remove that much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. (Both estimates courtesy of the US Environmental Protection Agency Greenhouse Gas Equivalency calculator).
Conclusion and Recommendations
As illustrated by the statistics, data visualizations, and written contextualizations above, the air travel caused by conference realignment will cause a substantial increase in carbon emissions for multiple college football teams. Yet, the environmental impacts from colleges changing conferences are not limited to football. California, Oregon, Stanford, UCLA, USC, and Washington all compete in dozens of other sports that compete more frequently such as basketball and baseball, which take well over 20 flights a season, way more than the 4-6 flights a football team rides on.
While flight travel in college sports is unavoidable, there are a few options universities can take to lower their carbon footprints in response to conference realignment.
Work with Conferences to Schedule Sporting Events by Geographical Proximity: Schools can collaborate with the conference to prioritize matchups that are shorter geographical distances. For example, Washington and Oregon should insist on playing each other, as well as USC and UCLA, to reduce the number of cross country trips to schools in Michigan, Ohio and other midwestern states. This strategy also has additional benefits of less time-zone related jet lag for athletes, leading to higher quality football games, as well as preserving regional rivalries that fans love.
Expand Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Infrastructure on University Campuses: In response to the inevitable cross country flights, schools can increase their consumption of renewable energy sources and implement energy efficiency upgrades to more sustainably power campus. Colleges are major consumers of electricity and powering operations with more renewables would lead to a sizable decrease in renewable energy that could offset some or all the emissions from increased athletic department air travel.
College football and other NCAA sports are an American tradition that will continue to provide amazing experiences for athletes and fans for generations to come. However, as college athletics continues to stray further away from its regional roots and teams travel across the country more frequently for contests, it is important to recognize the environmental impacts the increased associated air travel will have. While the greenhouse gas emissions of college sports pale in comparison to other industries, the high visibility and publicity of college sports presents a unique opportunity for universities to show the world that it is possible to recognize and find solutions to reduce carbon emissions in rapidly changing situations.
Data Notes
If you are interested in viewing, replicating, or citing the original dataset and statistical analysis used in this article, fill out an inquiry here.
Thanks to Data Scientist Nicholas Fadanelli for designing the two figures present in this article. Check out his original work over at Fadanalytics for some more insightful college football, Chicago, and other data analytics content.
