Tony Petitti feels 'really good' about how the Big Ten has combatted travel concerns after expansion

No conference is going to ask their schools to travel more than the Big Ten. While that may be true, Tony Petitti and those with the league are comfortable with how they put together the schedules for their first few years as a collection of 18 programs.

Petitti addressed his conference’s mileage during his time at the podium opening Big Ten Media Days on Tuesday. He began by prefacing that different sports have a distinct layout with what their slate has to look like. However, after taking all of those into account, the league is positive about how they put it all together.

“First, I think it’s important to understand that every sport is different. Every sport has its own regular season format, its own postseason format within the Big Ten,” noted Petitti from Indianapolis. “So we start from that place, right?”

“The process of building a schedule is collaborative. It involves our faculty reps, our administrators, our coaches all the way across, and ultimately going up to the top of our leadership at the presidential level,” Petitti said. “We’ve taken a lot of care to try to minimize travel where we can. I will tell you that we feel really good about where we’ve ended up across all of our sports.”

For example, upon the release of the football schedule for 2024, the Big Ten listed “balance of annual travel by distance, regions of the conference, and time zones” as one of their primary objectives.

In total, the league’s football teams will travel nearly 158,000 miles for their 216 total games. The four new teams from the west obviously account for most of that calculation with their road trips. Still, it averages out to 8,767.3 miles per program this fall.

With that said, nothing about this system is set yet for the Big Ten. This was their first chance at piecing together a schedule for 18 schools across three time zones nationally. From here, all they can do is learn and take more into account to construct future ones for the conference.

“I really believe that scheduling is something that has to be constantly evaluated by sport. I anticipate that we’ll get hopefully a lot more right these next couple of years with the way we’ve formatted and scheduled. But it’s our responsibility and our job to listen to student-athletes, to listen to coaches to make sure that we’re adjusting and making the changes we need,” said Petitti.

“While we feel really good about the work that we’ve done this past summer and that our team has led, I would anticipate that over time there will be changes,” Petitti said. “It just seems like it would be the natural progression.”

This kind of travel just comes with the Big Ten becoming a national conference now. Still, while its demanding, it sounds as though it will hopefully only improve as they adjust to this new era.