Cost curbs on travel are eyed

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 15, 2009

OXON HILL, Md. -- It's a long way from Orem to Newark. Just ask the Wolverines of Utah Valley University.

Utah Valley is a member of the Great West Conference, one of those geograghy-gone-nuts NCAA Division I leagues with two California schools at one end and the New Jersey Institute of Technology at the other. Every road conference game for Utah Valley Athletic Director Mike Jacobsen's teams involves a long plane flight, and this year his travel costs are up 10 to 12 percent due of the twists of turns of the slumping economy.

And, yes, he realizes it would make more sense to be in a league with nearby schools -- certainly with at least one or two from Utah -- but most Division I conferences abandoned the tight-knit concept long ago.

"It's a huge burden," Jacobsen said. "It's what we have to do right now to be in a conference."

Jacobsen was among scores of attendees yesterday at a forum at the NCAA Convention on how to reduce travel budgets. Among the tips: have the players get together the night before a road trip and combine their belongings to help reduce those new baggage fees imposed by the airlines.

Terry Holland has a more radical solution. The East Carolina athletic director believes that sports departments have "an overarching moral and patriotic obligation to reduce the consumption of oil and other limited resources."

"If intercollegiate athletics sends a message of 'business as usual' while American citizens are losing their jobs, homes and even more precious possessions, then we will deserve any dire consequences that are visited upon us," Holland, a former men's basketball coach and athletic director at Virginia, wrote in an e-mail to the AP.