West Coast Schools Facing Incredibly Heavy Travel in 2026 Season

0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Conference realignment has meant a lot of college football teams travel enormous distances during the season.

In 2026, those teams near the Pacific Ocean are impacted far beyond their more easterly counterparts.

Gautham Marthandan of the Action Network ranked the the teams traveling the most, and as you might expect, the Hawai'i Rainbow Warriors have to travel more than anyone else at more than 37,000 miles.

They're followed by one of the most nonsensical team and conference pairings in college sports: Stanford, located in Palo Alto, California, and the Cardinal's inclusion in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

The Cardinal are traveling just under 22,000 miles this season, followed by fellow Bay Area squad Sacramento State at just under 21,000 miles.

North Dakota State comes in next at just under 19,000, followed by Arizona State and California, at Nos. 5 and 6, respectively, both of which travel a little over 18,000 miles.

Interestingly, Arizona State had the biggest increase in miles traveled over last season — 9,466, more than doubling their 2025 figure.

That's at least partially due to a road schedule that includes a game in Florida, two games in Texas and a game in Kansas.

And Cal, like Stanford, falls victim to being in the ACC as a West Coast team.

California schools also round out much of the top 12, with USC at No. 8 (more than 16,000 miles), San Jose State at No. 11 (nearly 14,000 miles) and UCLA at No. 12 (only 25 miles fewer than San Jose State).

That means of the top 12 most-traveled squads, half of those schools are in California.

So who travels the least? The Southeastern Conference.

SEC teams fill four of the five least-traveled spots, with archrivals Alabama and Auburn coming in at Nos. 137 and 138, respectively.

The Crimson Tide will travel just under 2,500 miles this year, while the Tigers travel less than 2,200.

Yes, that's about one tenth of the miles to be traveled by the Stanford, and it's less than 6% of the Rainbow Warriors' travel.

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