Where Virginia Tech football ranks in ACC travel in 2024
By Scott Roche
As we begin the 2024 college football season, we also begin the new-look ACC. The conference is welcoming California, Stanford, and SMU this season and it will make for some crazy travel schedules across the country for all teams.
With the conference now on both coasts and in between, schools are going to see a spike in travel, and football schools are going to feel a lot. Earlier this week, he wrote about Stanford and California having an insane travel schedule, but that was to be expected with expansion from coast to coast. But how much will each school be traveling this fall for football?
Grant Huges of 247Sports ranked the ACC schools based on travel and where did Virginia Tech land on the rankings?
Virginia Tech lands in the middle of the ACC in terms of football travel this fall
Virginia Tech ranked ninth in the ACC in terms of travel for the upcoming season which was nearly right in the middle of Huges' rankings with 8,443 miles due to be traveled.
"Virginia Tech faces one of the toughest turnarounds in the ACC next season. The Hokies take a 912.1-mile trip to Miami on Friday, Sept. 27, and will make a quick return to Blacksburg before jetting 2,691.7 miles to Stanford on Saturday, Oct. 5. That's more than 7,000 miles in nine days, including return trips. "
- Grant Hughes
Hughes is right, the Hokies do face one of the toughest turnarounds this fall with their trip to South Florida to play Miami on a Friday night before heading across the country eight days later to play at Stanford. That will eat up a chunk of their travel for the entire season.
This season Virginia Tech travels to Vanderbilt to open the season in Nashville, then after a home game vs. Marshall they will play at Old Dominion. There four ACC road trips along with Miami and Stanford are Syracuse and Duke. The silver lining to the Hokies' schedule this season is that after four road games in the first six weeks, they finish the season with four games in their final six contests.
Clemson travels the least this season, 2,472 miles, with no trip to the West Coast, while Virginia travels the second least amount of miles, just 3,151. Over time, those numbers will even out as the seasons go by with the new scheduling model the conference now has. This season for Virginia Tech, they get their toughest travel out of the away in the first six weeks.