Mizzou travel expenses among tops in the SEC

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- The University of Missouri's first year as the SEC's northernmost outpost cost the school an extra $1 million in unanticipated travel expenses.

The Columbia Daily Tribune reported this week that Mizzou spent $7.1 million on travel in the 2012-13 academic year. That's $1 million more than what athletics officials expected and nearly $2 million more than travel costs during the school's final season in the Big 12 Conference.

Missouri shared the top spot for Southeastern Conference travel costs with fellow Big 12 exile Texas A& M among the seven SEC public schools that provided data to the Tribune. Four of the other six public universities in the conference said they had not yet compiled year-end spending reports, and two did not reply. Vanderbilt, the league's only private school, is not legally obligated to disclose its finances.

Missouri coaches and administrators knew that conference travel would be a challenge. Commercial air travel to most of the SEC campuses is limited, and the move from the Big 12 eliminated games at three schools within driving distance: Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State.

Women's soccer coach Bryan Blitz said his squad was at a competitive disadvantage with its frequent, long-haul road trips. One of the worst: a 1,900-mile round-trip jaunt to Gainesville, Fla., and Tuscaloosa, Ala., that involved six bus rides, five flights and 11 stops in seven cities.

"I think we have to do some things moving forward to be able to compete for SEC championships, and travel is a part of that," he said. "I'm never going to question the SEC move. It was a no-brainer. But like everybody knew, there's a learning curve and adjustment."

Missouri's travel expenses were nearly twice as high as some conference members, the Tribune reported: Ole Miss spent $3.8 million and Georgia $4 million in 2012-13.

"We didn't do anything extravagant traveling last year at all, and we never have," said Doug Gillin, Missouri's deputy athletic director. "It's always going to be a high expense line item."

Even with the extra travel costs, Missouri still comes out ahead financially with the SEC move, receiving a $20.7 million from the SEC in league revenue this year. That figure is only expected to grow with the launch of the SEC Network, a joint venture with ESPN.

Missouri softball coach Ehren Earleywine called his team's travel requirements "brutal." Unlike the school's football and basketball teams, which fly charter, non-revenue sports such as softball, baseball are at the mercy of commercial air travel.

"It just wears on you," Earleywine said.

The average distance between Missouri and an SEC school is 518 miles, nearly 100 miles more than the average distance between the school and members of the 2011-12 Big 12.

The lack of big-city airports in the SEC hits Missouri in both directions. Columbia Regional Airport has just one commercial carrier, American Airlines, with nonstop flights to two cities outside the SEC's footprint: Chicago and Dallas. That typically means a bus ride to Kansas City or St. Louis, with another long bus ride once those teams touched down in Atlanta; Birmingham, Ala.; Memphis, Tenn.; or Jacksonville. Fla.

Among the longest Mizzou trips: 10-hour bus rides to Tennessee and to Hoover, Ala., for the baseball team, and a ride of nearly eight hours for a softball road trip to Ole Miss.

Former Missouri softball player Nicole Hudson, a recent graduate, said her teammates' travel struggles were magnified on return trips from weekend series that often brought the team back to Columbia after 11 p.m. on Sunday nights.

"Those are the rough ones," she said. "The girls have to turn around and get ready for the next week. It's exhausting. The added stress of school and the busy schedule can kind of affect you."

Gillin said Missouri is considering whether to use charter flights for non-revenue teams once or twice annually on particularly long road trips. That would also minimize lost classroom time, he said.

"We're taking a hard look at how much class time our kids are missing because of travel," he said. "Some of the SEC teams, what we've found, various times throughout the year they'll charter. We didn't do a lot of that this year. That'll be something that we'll look at, to charter a couple of our teams maybe once depending on how far away is it, how much class time will they miss."