August 2, 2024 is the day that the University of Oregon (UO) will officially become a part of the Big Ten Conference, leaving the Pac-12 after over 100 years of membership. Their biggest rivals, the Oregon State University Beavers, decided to stay in the Pac-12, and have since been left with a conference that is a shadow of its former self.
“The driver behind this decision for Oregon [to leave the Pac-12] in large part was ‘how do we maximize how much money we’re getting for football, and how much visibility football has?’” said UO sports analyst Reid Tingley, who hosts the podcast Quacked Out which focuses on UO sports.
In the Pac-12, almost all of the teams are on the West Coast. The move into the Big Ten will mean more extensive travel for athletes, as most schools in the Big Ten are located in the northeast United States. Increased travel will affect some of UO’s sport teams more than others.
“Once a season, you can kind of deal with it,” said Coach Cody Schnaufer, the head football coach at Lincoln. “But for somebody that’s doing it constantly, it’s definitely going to have an impact on academics, on health, your sleep cycle, increases burnout because you might be sleeping on a bus but you’re not sleeping the same way you normally would.”
Studies and health, physical or mental, can be impacted by increased travel. The change in conference could make it difficult to maintain a balance between health, schoolwork and sports. KK Humphreys, a senior on the UO softball team, had this to say on X (formerly known as Twitter) “it’s an upsetting day for the Pac-12 lovers and people who love the sanity of student athletes’ mental health”.
