[msqueri]

Yes playing on the east coast at 10AM on your body clock is a disadvantage. Conversely, BC flying over and playing at 11pm on their body clock is also a disadvantage. I'd argue between home and away games it generally evens out.

Stanford would be doing this 4-6 times a season whereas the teams we'd be competing with in the standings would do it once or twice. The difference in individual rivalries could generally even out (though I don't think so) without that meaning the overall impact evens out. I think it's very wishful to think the team that is criss-crossing the country all fall will have the impacts even out compared to the team that only has to do one or two trips....which is everybody we'd be competing against. And that's to say nothing of how much worse it is for the body clock to fly east rather than to fly west. It's easier to delay your internal clock than to advance it. For these two reasons - more of our games would be travel-impaired than the teams we're competing with in the standings and it's worse to fly east - I do think this is a structural, perennial disadvantage. I think I still prefer it to trying to reconstitute the Pac-whatever or joining the Mountain West. As much as I can't get past the travel, it's even harder to get past moving out of major college football. But we should be real about how much this would suck.

By the way, I'm necessarily speaking in generalities here but the real impact would depend on circumstances and, particularly, the exact time of games. If we can be consistently playing at 4pm or later East Coast time (I suppose I can live with 3:30pm, which is more realistic) I would be thrilled and not consider it much of a disadvantage, certainly not so much that I'd bitch about Stanford finding a spot in a power conference. My issue is pragmatic. In real life game times will be determined by tv, and tv requires that games be spread throughout the day. This coming season the first Saturday of the season has ACC kickoffs from 12pm until 8pm (with two games at noon). The second week there are kickoffs scheduled from 11am until 8:30pm, with five games at noon or earlier. The third week it's 12pm to 7:30pm with three noon games.

If we're being realistic, the marquee slots will be at 3:30pm and later, so this really comes down to how good we are. If we have a program like we did from 2010-2018, we'd probably have a lot of games that are not much of a problem for our body clock because networks would want to televise us in good games. But if Stanford is a middling or worse program, how do we avoid noon (that is, for our players, 9am) kickoffs?

[msqueri]

Yes playing on the east coast at 10AM on your body clock is a disadvantage. Conversely, BC flying over and playing at 11pm on their body clock is also a disadvantage. I'd argue between home and away games it generally evens out.

Stanford would be doing this 4-6 times a season whereas the teams we'd be competing with in the standings would do it once or twice. The difference in individual rivalries could generally even out (though I don't think so) without that meaning the overall impact evens out. I think it's very wishful to think the team that is criss-crossing the country all fall will have the impacts even out compared to the team that only has to do one or two trips....which is everybody we'd be competing against. And that's to say nothing of how much worse it is for the body clock to fly east rather than to fly west. It's easier to delay your internal clock than to advance it. For these two reasons - more of our games would be travel-impaired than the teams we're competing with in the standings and it's worse to fly east - I do think this is a structural, perennial disadvantage. I think I still prefer it to trying to reconstitute the Pac-whatever or joining the Mountain West. As much as I can't get past the travel, it's even harder to get past moving out of major college football. But we should be real about how much this would suck.

By the way, I'm necessarily speaking in generalities here but the real impact would depend on circumstances and, particularly, the exact time of games. If we can be consistently playing at 4pm or later East Coast time (I suppose I can live with 3:30pm, which is more realistic) I would be thrilled and not consider it much of a disadvantage, certainly not so much that I'd bitch about Stanford finding a spot in a power conference. My issue is pragmatic. In real life game times will be determined by tv, and tv requires that games be spread throughout the day. This coming season the first Saturday of the season has ACC kickoffs from 12pm until 8pm (with two games at noon). The second week there are kickoffs scheduled from 11am until 8:30pm, with five games at noon or earlier. The third week it's 12pm to 7:30pm with three noon games.

If we're being realistic, the marquee slots will be at 3:30pm and later, so this really comes down to how good we are. If we have a program like we did from 2010-2018, we'd probably have a lot of games that are not much of a problem for our body clock because networks would want to televise us in good games. But if Stanford is a middling or worse program, how do we avoid noon (that is, for our players, 9am) kickoffs?