Despite all the turmoil created by conference realignment, some have been better than other at keeping the geographical integrity of their league intact. In fact, the one that’s done the best job is the MAAC.
This germination for this post came from an interesting question that was raised yesterday on Twitter.
@Title_BU it sounds like it, but you forget that the @HorizonLeague is the most geographically compact conference in D-I. @thesummitleague
— PantherU.com (@PantherU) December 4, 2015
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Well, I had a bunch of free time this weekend, so I decided to figure it out. And it turns out the MAAC is the most compact conference in the country. Last season MAAC teams traveled an average of almost 1,080 miles during their conference schedule. The most? The WAC at more than 7,000 miles.
Here’s how I did it:
- I downloaded arena data from Basketball State.
- I plugged those arenas in Google’s Geocoding API.
- I found conference away schedules by using Ken Pomeroy’s website.
- I then calculated the distance of the schedule using the GPS coordates of each team’s home arena.
Note: I tried doing this for 2015-16 season, but there are currently too many errors in the game location data available online for me to feel confident in the results. Because all the 2014-15 games have been played (and I checked the data), it feels much more reasonable to use it, even though it doesn’t include say NJIT in the Atlantic Sun.
You already know the extremes, but here’s the entire list:
- MAAC: 1,079 miles
- Ivy League: 1,178
- OVC: 1,436
- Big South: 1,505
- Patriot League: 1,646
- America East: 1,742
- MAC: 1,768
- Horizon League: 1,781
- NEC: 1,962
- Southern Conference: 2,009
- Southland: 2,337
- MEAC: 2,454
- SWAC: 2,477
- MVC: 2,556
- Atlantic Sun: 2,698
- CAA: 2,811
- A-10: 2,919
- Big Ten: 3,572
- SEC: 3,680
- Summit: 3,961
- ACC: 4,043
- WCC: 4,199
- Big 12: 4,478
- Sun Belt: 4,543
- Big East: 4,705
- Big Sky: 5,025
- Pac-12: 5,454
- Big West: 5,460
- C-USA: 6,006
- American: 6,659
- MWC: 6,988
- WAC: 7,238
Note: In this section you can click to enlarge any map.
In case you’re curious. Here’s what the MAAC looks like visually (it’s super compact!):

And here’s the Big South. One of the more surprising ones near the top of the list:

And finally, here’s why the WAC is last:
