Is additional journey hurting Big Ten soccer groups? What’s reality (and fiction) amid realignment

Somewhere over the Rockies, life within the new Big Ten should have hit residence for Miller Moss.

Moss, now at Louisville, was USC’s beginning quarterback in its inaugural season in a brand new league. The Trojans performed convention video games at Michigan, Minnesota and Maryland and misplaced all three, regardless of being favored in every sport. Moss and his teammates made three lengthy flights again to L.A., their knees folded behind tray tables and their legs stuffed into compression boots designed to enhance circulation and cut back soreness.

“Just being completely candid, if you fly back that long and you lose the game, you’re sitting on that flight for five hours coming back,” Moss stated. “For lack of a better word, that sucks.”

The Trojans have been a part of a statistic that was broadcast extensively in the course of the Big Ten’s first season as a bicoastal convention following the additions of USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington from the Pac-12. Big Ten groups touring throughout two or extra time zones have been 8-18 in league play and 8-20 general, with street groups underperforming the purpose unfold by about 2.2 factors in these video games.

Those statistics want some context. Big Ten groups have been 47-34 at residence final season in convention video games, so it’s no shock that groups crossing a number of time zones had a shedding document. Ohio State, Penn State and Indiana, three of the Big Ten’s 4 CFP contributors, crossed a number of time zones solely as soon as; UCLA, Washington and USC, groups that completed a mixed 11-16 within the Big Ten, did it 3 times every. (Oregon, the Big Ten champion, additionally crossed a number of time zones 3 times and produced three of the eight wins.)

Was the 8-18 document a product of extra street video games involving mediocre groups, or did these groups have mediocre information partly as a result of they needed to journey extra? It’s troublesome to separate the 2 components, however coaches and gamers usually downplay the influence of lengthy journeys.

“I wouldn’t put any of that on the travel or changing time zones, whatever that may be,” USC lineman Elijah Paige stated. “In the NFL, you’ve got to travel all across the country. All of us want to play in the NFL, so we’re doing that right now.”

*Round-trip miles traveled for Big Ten convention video games solely

While it’s intuitive to see a connection between jet lag and diminished athletic efficiency, research designed to check that query haven’t produced uniform outcomes, stated Vishesh Kapur, founding father of the UW Sleep Medicine Center on the University of Washington. That doesn’t imply the impact isn’t there, solely that it’s troublesome to isolate and measure.

“There’s some inconsistency on the exact impact,” Kapur stated. “I think there’s more consistency on what folks like me think about what the impact should be.”

Anyone who’s flown from Los Angeles to New York is aware of the sensation of waking up in a brand new metropolis, feeling foggy, fatigued, disoriented or out of sync. This is as a result of journey throughout time zones disrupts the physique’s circadian rhythms, these pure patterns that regulate sleep, power, digestion and different processes.

Garrett Augsburger, a sports activities science researcher and adjunct professor at TCU, based an organization referred to as Flatline Fitness that helps vacationers take care of jet lag. He’s additionally printed analysis on the hyperlink between journey and athletic efficiency and works with elite athletes to assist them carry out higher after lengthy journeys.

Augsburger stated it’s “100 percent plausible” that the cross-country journey contributed to Big Ten groups performing worse than anticipated when crossing a number of time zones.

“Anecdotally, you can feel that when you wake up after travel and you’re like, ‘This doesn’t feel right,’” Augsburger stated. “Our internal clock is affected by that jump in time zones. It’s going to negatively affect reaction times, sleep architecture, cognitive processing and, in athletes, injury risk.”

Circadian rhythms are managed by a area of the mind referred to as the suprachiasmatic nucleus. When mild hits the retina, Kapur stated, it triggers a response within the mind that retains the physique’s pure processes working on the identical inner clock.

This inner clock regulates physique temperature and hormone manufacturing, components that affect athletic efficiency. Body temperature rises all through the day, Augsburger stated, which permits muscular tissues to fireside extra rapidly, rising response time and lowering harm danger.

“Particularly when you go three time zones or more, you’re acutely causing a dyssynchrony between your activities and your body clock, which is still set to your old time zone,” Kapur stated. “That leaves you feeling not well.”

Not everybody responds to cross-country journey in the identical approach. The physique’s response is influenced by an individual’s diurnal chronotype — or, in layman’s phrases, whether or not you’re a morning particular person or a day particular person.

Peak athletic efficiency occurs within the late afternoon or early night for most individuals, Augsburger stated, although just a few individuals peak earlier within the day. If a contest is scheduled exterior of an individual’s peak window — say, early within the morning for a group touring west to east or late at night time for a group touring east to west — it’s vital to acclimate prematurely.

Acclimation is particularly vital for West Coast groups enjoying early video games within the Eastern Time Zone. That’s partly resulting from a quirk of the physique’s inner clock, which prefers a day barely longer than 24 hours. An individual residing in a cave with no pure mild would gravitate towards a day that lasts between 24 1/2 and 25 hours, Kapur stated. Traveling east to west works in concord with the pure desire for an extended day, whereas touring west to east works in opposition to it.

For gamers at Oregon, making ready for a sport within the Eastern Time Zone is a weeklong course of. Players alter their meal occasions and sleep schedules, and the group does a exercise referred to as a “primer” the morning of the sport to synchronize gamers’ inner clocks.

“You can’t try to feel OK the night before,” tight finish Kenyon Sadiq stated. “It starts a week in advance.”

The want for additional restoration after a protracted journey typically exceeds in significance the preparation time for journey, in keeping with a number of Big Ten gamers and coaches who endured a soccer season of prolonged flights and triple-time-zone jumps.

“The worst part of the game was when we got back so late,” Penn State offensive lineman Nick Dawkins stated of an October 2024 journey to USC.

The Nittany Lions traveled west a day early — Thursday as an alternative of Friday — and gained 33-30 in extra time on the Coliseum. The expertise ready Penn State gamers for a December journey to Arizona for a College Football Playoff quarterfinal sport that it gained in opposition to Boise State.

“Everyone’s doing the same thing,” Penn State security Zakee Wheatley stated. “There’s no excuses to be made. Travel and play football.”

Still, many Big Ten applications make use of specialists in sports activities science tasked partly to attenuate the disadvantages inherent in enjoying on the street.

“The No. 1 thing is education,” stated Mitch Cholewinski, Nebraska’s coordinator of sports activities science. “If the players don’t know, they can’t be an active participant in their own recovery.”

To help their recoveries, Cholewinski stated he encourages Nebraska gamers to take measures that start days earlier than a visit: Sleep an additional 35 to 40 minutes per night time, and if they will’t get the remaining at residence, sensory deprivation tanks can be found on the Huskers’ soccer complicated to be used after follow or between courses.

In devising a restoration plan, he considers complete journey time over journey distance. Not all journeys are created equal. A go to to UCLA or Maryland, each on the Nebraska schedule in 2025, may embrace a considerable bus experience after the flight. Cholewinski coordinates with the vitamin employees to tell gamers on each element of a visit and advises them on hydration efforts and methods with meals.

“Don’t eat (Raising) Cane’s before dinner,” he stated. “I try to nudge them as much as I can, because they have enough stuff going on.”

Whether you’re a star quarterback or a enterprise traveler, the recommendation for combating jet lag is basically the identical. Make positive you’re nicely rested earlier than you go and squeeze in just a few strategic naps main as much as the journey. Drink plenty of water. Avoid alcohol and unhealthy airport meals. And attempt to get a great dose of daylight within the morning to leap begin the physique’s every day cycle.

This isn’t revolutionary stuff for applications that spend thousands and thousands to maximise the efficiency of their athletes. If you ask most coaches, they’ll say the influence of long-distance journey is overblown, given on a regular basis and power they spend addressing it. But in a hyper-competitive sport, coaches are in search of even the slightest benefit. That’s why USC determined to tweak its journey routine after the Trojans completed 7-6 general of their first season within the Big Ten.

“I can’t sit here and say (the travel) was some massive factor on the season,” coach Lincoln Riley stated. “I don’t believe that. Now, are there things that both on our weekly schedule and then when we travel that we’re going to adjust and do differently? Yes. They’re not earth-shattering. But there are some things we feel like are going to give our team a better chance to play better, recover better and be ready to go on the road.”

All of the subtle restoration on the planet can’t make a five-hour flight extra pleasant, particularly after a loss. That’s one factor Moss gained’t miss after transferring from the Big Ten to the ACC, the place he’ll keep away from a visit to face one of many convention’s personal California colleges.

“Every hour you’re on that plane is an hour you’re not walking through, you’re not watching film, you’re not meeting with your guys,” Moss stated, including that the journey “wears on a team.”

“Luckily for us, I think the farthest we go west is Dallas for SMU.”

— The Athletic’s Matt Baker contributed reporting. 

(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; photographs: Diamond Images / Getty, Icon Sportswire / Getty, Tom Hauck / Getty)