In 1891, University of Chicago President William Rainey Harper hired Amos Alonzo Stagg to coach the newly founded school’s football program, then instructed him “to develop teams that we can send around the country” and promised the squad would travel in style.

In 1935, St. Mary’s College football coach “Slip” Madigan chartered a train from the school’s California campus for 34 members of his highly regarded team and 120 fans. They traversed the Arizona desert and the Gulf Coast to Miami, Florida, then journeyed north to New York City for the Gaels’ annual football game against Fordham – the halfway point of an 8,300-mile journey through 24 states that took 10 days to complete.

Fast-forward to 2008. In mid-November, Chicago’s football team will travel by air to Pittsburgh the night before a noon contest at University Athletic Association rival Carnegie Mellon, but because the flight it booked for the trip home that evening after the game has been canceled in this fall’s broad cutbacks on available planes, the squad will be forced to spend a second night in a hotel – an expense the school hoped to avoid.

And a couple of months ago, the men’s soccer team from St. Mary’s flew cross-country to play a pair of games during Labor Day weekend at Navy in Annapolis, Maryland – a place the school’s wandering gridiron caravan briefly visited during its 1935 journey. After splitting its games there against UMBC and Navy, the team flew home three days later – to a school that in 2003 discontinued its football program.

College sports teams travel long distances for a variety of reasons – to gain recognition for a fledgling team, whip up excitement among boosters, maintain rivalries, provide students with lasting memories or to test themselves against unfamiliar opponents.

They’ve been doing so since long before the NCAA was established in 1906, an action that eventually added another reason to the list – the pursuit of national championships.

Teams traveled through the Gilded Age and the mid-1890s depression that ended that spurt of growth in America’s international power. They traveled through the Great Depression and then through the beginnings of an economic recovery in the 1930s, when sports played a major role in restoring the nation’s confidence.

They still are hitting the road today in an era of $4 gasoline and dwindling travel options, and amid worries about the country’s economic stability – though the impact of these latest challenges for NCAA member schools remains to be seen.

History would indicate that somehow, some way, teams will continue to seek competition across the highways and through the skies – in whatever ways they can afford to do so. However, just like orange barrels in a construction zone, obstacles loom.

‘This has come on us pretty quickly’

Chicago’s Rosalie Resch has seen steamer trunks used by Stagg’s traveling football teams stored on campus.

But as associate athletics director for finance and business at a school that belongs to the geographically far-flung UAA, she won’t be tempted to use that luggage for today’s Maroon teams any time soon – not during a time when airlines are charging both for bulky and extra bags.

“One of the things we’re going to do is require students to share checked bags on airlines,” she says. “We’re going to say, ‘You can have a carry-on bag, but you and your roommate are going to need to share a checked bag, and if you really feel like you need a second checked bag, you’re going to have to pay for that yourself.’”

Chicago, a major national football power in the early 20th century, now competes in a Division III conference against teams from similar research-oriented institutions in other large cities. But those places are far apart, meaning that while Maroon teams typically travel by bus to play Washington U. in St. Louis or Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, they fly to play other UAA members in Pittsburgh, Atlanta, New York City, Boston, and Rochester, New York.

In some ways, Chicago and its sister UAA institutions – which are unusual in a division in which most teams travel by van or bus – have been dealing for years with issues that now are becoming more problematic for schools in all divisions.

“This has come on us pretty quickly,” says Gene Taylor, director of athletics at North Dakota State, which competes in one of Division I’s more geographically dispersed conferences, the Summit League.

“When we started our budget process in the spring, gas prices were still under $3. Suddenly they shoot up to $4, and our budgeting process was already pretty much out the window.”

Bison teams that must fly generally must rely on charters – commercial air service to and from Fargo, North Dakota, is limited – and that means costs have become wildly unpredictable as flying services pass increased fuel costs along to customers. The impact is felt on the ground, too – teams that previously may have used a bus for a trip now are considering traveling by van.

“While we want our student-athletes to have the experience of traveling to different areas and to see different parts of the country while they are competing, there’s no question that the increasing expenses of doing so are on our mind,” says Tim Selgo, director of athletics at Grand Valley State, whose teams’ national success are represented by five NACDA Directors’ Cup awards – honoring the best overall Division II athletics program – resting in the school’s trophy case.

Selgo says it’s likely that Laker teams will make fewer special trips outside the school’s region, and even during routine travel within the school’s conference, they’re unlikely to spend a night on the road.

“If we do stay overnight, I guarantee it is at a place that has free breakfast,” he says.

Yet, the impulse to travel remains intact – for all kinds of reasons.

“As research institutions in metropolitan areas, we have a uniqueness that makes us say, ‘We want to be competing against schools that are like us,’ ” Chicago’s Resch says. “We really believe in Division III, and believe in providing the experience of playing against other types of institutions – we play liberal arts colleges (in Illinois and nearby states), we play state institutions in Wisconsin – but we believe our core commitment needs to be to those schools that share the same institutional standards.”

North Dakota State, which recently reclassified from Division II, is striving to be competitive in Division I, and Taylor says the school hasn’t “compromised on that as a priority.” It also wants to make sure that travel remains a positive experience for its student-athletes.

“My priority is the student-athlete experience,” says Bison softball coach Darren Mueller, who concedes he may have to reduce the number of tournaments his team travels to in 2010, while he keeps a watchful eye on air fares and hotel rates.

“I want to make sure they enjoy their experience – I don’t want them to be staying in a place that’s not going to be safe, and I don’t want them to be traveling at times we should not be traveling (to save money).”

Collaborative solutions

There’s no question that providing that experience is becoming more challenging – whether it’s for the football team from Fresno State, which Rivals.com football writer Olin Buchanan recently calculated will travel farther than any other Football Bowl Subdivision team this fall (a total of 18,190 miles to and from seven road opponents), or at Division III member Defiance, where Athletics Director Dick Kaiser regretfully is requiring the school’s teams to make their longest round trips for conference play (4 ½ hours each way) all in the same day.

“(Coaches) say, ‘I’d rather stay overnight, and I’ll take vans (instead of buses, to save money),’ and I’ll say, ‘No, we’re not doing that, because I want a safe trip down and a safe trip back,’ ” said Kaiser, whose school in Ohio is a member of the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference and plays opponents in Indiana and Kentucky. “And I don’t want coaches driving 4 ½ hours, coaching the game, and driving back 4 ½ hours in a van. That’s ludicrous – you’re just asking for disaster.”

Because choosing to just stay home really isn’t an option in intercollegiate athletics – if everyone did so, college sports would become intramurals – NCAA member conferences and schools are working more collaboratively than ever before to help each other maneuver around all the detours.

Many of those efforts occur at the conference level.

Many leagues long ago adopted the concept of “travel partners” – pairs of nearby schools that host opponents from more distant league outposts for games on the same weekend, and that in a few cases, travel together when their turn comes to reciprocate.

Others adopt policies, practices and plans that more directly address a league’s unique circumstances.

The UAA conducts team competition among league members during just a couple of weekends during the season – and “if we know the Head of the Charles (rowing event) is in Boston when it’s volleyball weekend, we might have Brandeis host the earlier (weekend) rather than the one that conflicts, to keep hotel costs down,” Resch says.

Division II’s Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference – which recently expanded from 10 to 14 members – allowed each sport’s coaches to decide whether to divide league members into divisions, for the purpose of making travel easier and less expensive. Only the football coaches selected the divisional option – but that was before travel abruptly became more expensive.

“Men’s and women’s basketball already travel together in one bus (playing doubleheaders),” says Northern Sun Commissioner Butch Raymond. “So we already know we’re taking advantage of those kinds of efficiencies because we thought it was cost-effective, but now it’s going to become all the more important. Our schedules are set up on a two-year rotation, so during that time, we’ll take a hard look at whether we should be playing a divisional schedule in sports we currently don’t.”

Coaches also are playing an integral role in balancing the benefits and costs of team travel.

“Our coaches are as conscious of it as administrators are,” says North Dakota State’s Taylor. “For example, our baseball coach re-evaluated a trip to Texas (where the team planned to play while returning from a trip to Florida) and (instead) stayed two extra days in Florida to get the games he needed – and saved money and class time.”

While coaches may not be moving their teams around in quite the same style as “Slip” Madigan’s 1935 St. Mary’s football team – which converted a baggage car on its chartered train into a training room and stopped off for workouts in Lubbock, Texas; New Orleans; Pensacola and Miami, Florida; and Richmond, Virginia, en route to New York – they still want to maximize the experience while minimizing the hardships of travel.

“I don’t want to reduce the student-athlete experience,” North Dakota State softball coach Mueller said. “I’ve been trying to keep things as comfortable as we’ve had the past few years.”

A prudent look ahead

Longer-term planning also remains essential for conference and school athletics administrators, even though changing times make it tough to look very far into the future.

Even St. Mary’s football Gaels – enjoying national attention and drawing widespread media attention with its travels during the 1930s, but nonexistent today – were attentive enough to costs that according to a recent article in the college’s alumni magazine, coach Madigan promised to toss a student yell leader off the train to New York City, after discovering the young man had stowed away rather than pay the $20 fare fans paid to accompany the team.

Perhaps in an illustration of some of the more unanticipated problems of travel, the student eluded Madigan at the next stop in Stockton, California, and made it all the way to the Fordham game.

Today, administrators and coaches are focused on keeping their teams from being sidetracked from competition, in weeks to come and further down the road.

“Anyone who’s not looking at how we appropriate dollars in the economic climate we’re in is not being prudent,” says David Riggins, director of athletics at Division II member Mars Hill.

“We’re fortunate to be in the Southeast, where there’s a DII school on every corner. But still, the cost issue has made us draw the radius around Mars Hill a little tighter. We’re not traveling as far – we’re even looking at how we travel.”

That planning for the future is changing the ways teams travel today.

“If we’re playing Case Western Reserve in Cleveland on a Friday night in basketball, then playing Rochester on Saturday, we used to fly to Cleveland, bus to Rochester, then fly back from Rochester – it was an open-leg flight, but the airline would give us a reasonable round-trip ticket,” Resch said. “There now is no reasonable round-trip ticket.

“So, we’re busing to Cleveland, continuing on a bus to Rochester, then flying back from Rochester, so we’re only buying a one-way segment. We’re going to be doing more of that.”

Grand Valley State’s Selgo, just as North Dakota State’s Mueller, foresees the possibility of cutting back on trips, but resists cutting back on aspects of travel that make trips better for student-athletes.

“While lodging and modes of travel may not change much, the frequency and length of trips may, simply because of inflation,” he says.

While schools such as Defiance already are combating the rising costs of chartered buses by limiting trips to a day in duration, others hope to find creative ways of maintaining long-standing practices – but more and more, being creative means finding ways to deal with next week’s problem, not next year’s.

“Right now, most trips (in the Northern Sun conference) are about three to four hours, which isn’t terrible, but most schools go in the night before, and their athletes have a good night’s rest and then a workout on the day of the game,” Raymond said. “Well, maybe that gets curtailed and you’re going to have to travel those three to four hours and then get off the bus and play.

“That makes for an uneven experience for the student-athlete. Nobody wants that, but we’re going to have to be creative in the future.”

Everyone will keep trying, though, because teams will keep traveling – it’s an essential element of college sports.

Chicago’s football team no longer is packing its steamer trunks for travel to Stanford. When it closes out its season November 15, it will be playing Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, not Pennsylvania, its one-time rival for national supremacy in Philadelphia.

But the Maroons will pick up their suitcases (even if it’s just one for every two roommates) and hit the road just the same, and keep doing what they’ve been doing now for many, many years – because that’s where the games are.