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The college football landscape has been subjected to a number of dramatic changes in recent years, which includes the conference realignment that will apparently have a terrible impact on the environment based on a new study examining its ramifications.
The various conferences that comprise the world of college athletics have historically been defined by geography to the point where three of the ones that comprise the Power 5 (the ACC, SEC, and Pac-12) incorporate the regions most of their teams call home in their names.
However, those monikers have become increasingly irrelevant as location has taken a backseat to the pedigree of the programs that make up the conferences at the center of the realignment movement that’s turned college football on its head.
As you likely know, the Pac-12 is on its deathbed after transforming into the Pac-2 thanks to the dominos that fell after USC and UCLA announced they were defecting to the Big Ten in 2022.
As a result, a number of programs located on the West Coast now share a conference with schools situated in the middle of the United States, while Stanford and Cal are now members of one that otherwise consists of schools on the other side of the country.
That means many teams will now have to travel much farther than they’re used to for a conference showdown, and according to AZ Central, realignment will also have a significant impact on the environment based on a study that asserts CO2 emissions are set to spike as a result.
The study in question, titled “Carbon Emissions in Football Games,” was recently published by researchers at Arizona State. After crunching the numbers, the team behind the paper concluded emissions linked to Big Ten teams traveling are poised to be approximately 2.5 times higher than last year, while the ACC’s are expected to double (they estimate a 23.6% rise for the Big 12, while the SEC’s is closer to 5%).
The authors note those numbers focus entirely on team travel and don’t account for fans who might also end up making lengthier trips to watch their team play on the road, so it’s likely the impact will be even greater when that factor is taken into account.