A hypothetical look at Clemson’s travel in the SEC

For now, Clemson is still part of the Atlantic Coast Conference. With the Southeastern and Big Ten conferences triggering the latest round of conference realignments with their recent moves, that could change in the future, which would also alter future travel plans.

While Clemson and the rest of the ACC stand pat for now – the league’s grant of rights agreement with ESPN is playing a major role in that at the moment – The Clemson Insider is pondering a potential question for the Tigers’ future: How much farther would Clemson have to travel as a member of one of those megaconferences?

For the sake of this hypothetical, let’s say the Tigers join the SEC. Adding Clemson wouldn’t change the SEC’s geographical footprint much like adding Texas didn’t when the Longhorns announced their pending departure from the Big 12 last year. The SEC already has member schools in Texas (Texas A&M) and South Carolina (South Carolina).

But Oklahoma, which joined Texas with its defection to the SEC, is a new addition that will be the conference’s farthest state west of the Mississippi as early as 2024. The farthest state to the west that houses an ACC football member is Kentucky (Louisville), though the league’s representation stretches to New York (Syracuse) and Massachusetts (Boston College). Missouri is as far north as the SEC goes.

While the ACC is one of the Power Five conferences that’s already announced plans to eliminate divisions in the future, the SEC hasn’t yet made that decision. So without knowing what the conference’s scheduling model would look like by the time Clemson joins the league, we’ll start with a broader look at the travel distances before getting more specific.

The distance from Clemson to every ACC stadium is a combined 5,794 miles. That’s 2,262 less miles than the total distance to every SEC stadium, though that degree of separation is expected given, for the time being, the SEC has two more football members (16) than the ACC (14).

Last year, Clemson traveled a combined 2,153 miles to play its ACC road schedule with Syracuse (858) being the longest of the four trips. This fall, with the Tigers set to travel to Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, Florida State and Boston College, their total mileage will decrease to 1,690.

If the SEC stays at an eight-game conference schedule moving forward and Clemson was to get the four shortest trips its first year in the league, which would include Georgia (76), South Carolina (134), Tennessee (195) and Auburn (236), the Tigers would cover 641 total miles.

But that’s not realistic. Clemson may draw some opponents that are more regional in terms of location, but a trip to at least one of Missouri, Texas A&M, Texas or Oklahoma would likely be on the itinerary each year as part of a rotating schedule or pod system. Texas’ Darrell K Royal Memorial Stadium would be the Tigers’ farthest trek at 1,054 miles.

The furthest distance Clemson travels in the ACC is Boston College (966), and only one other location within the league – the Carrier Dome at Syracuse – is more than 700 miles away. As division opponents, the Tigers already travel to those locations every other year, but Texas, Oklahoma (984), Texas A&M (952) and Missouri (788) are all at least 750 miles away.

So Clemson is potentially looking at logging more miles in the SEC, though the difference would be relatively marginal as a member of a conference that’s already located largely in close proximity to the Tigers.

Note: The distances for this story were calculated in miles from Memorial Stadium in Clemson to each opposing team’s stadium using the shortest route shown in Apple Maps. They also assumed driving as the mode of transportation. Flying would slightly alter the distances.