I’m interested in the answers to these questions for Division I-A schools, not for others. But if you want to answer for other schools, I can’t stop you.
What school is furthest from a major airport? That is, an airport that can handle the large airliners that football teams lease to go to away games.
I understand that West Virginia University makes a big deal about it being 80 miles from Pittsburgh International Airport, but it’s also 80 miles from Washington State to Spokane’s airport. But I think neither would win the contest, since the University of Idaho is 8 miles further from Spokane than WSU. So is the answer UofI, or is there one further away?
What are the two closest universities? Are any Div I-A schools adjacent?
Does the answer to question 2 change if you use distance between the stadiums their football teams use? Not counting schools that use the same stadiums, that is. For instance, USC and UCLA are 8 miles apart, but the stadiums (LA Coliseum and the Rose Bowl) are further away from each other. Not that I think USC and UCLA are the answer to question 2, but they might be.
What’s the most isolated school? That is, what school is furthest from another Div I-A school? Besides Hawaii, that is. My guess is UTEP, but it could be Washington. Or is it some other?
Are you only interested in football? Some schools are Div. I-A in some sports but not in others (e.g. mine, which is I-A in everything BUT football, where we’re I-AA).
As for the closest schools, I think that the only pair closer than UCLA/USC I can think of would be EMU and UM (Ypsilanti is only 6 miles down Washtenaw Ave. from Ann Arbor).
This assumes we are talking FBS schools, and not the Div. I-A schools in non football sports. If we talk about basketball, I’d think some of the Boston schools might be right on top of each other.
For basketball rivals, the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University are across the street from one another (actually, their campuses are a bit intertwined) in West Philadelphia. I don’t think Drexel has a football team, and Penn is in Div. 1-AA in football.
UNM is about 225 miles from NMSU. It’d also depend if we’re talking shortest distance you can drive or shortest distance as the crow flies. No idea where that puts it, but I’m also sure that the next closest D-1A schools are in Colorado, Arizona, and Texas (Air Force, Arizona/Arizona St., and Texas Tech–UTEP can’t count) and all seem to be all over 350 miles if you stick to the interstates (there are shortcuts that Google Earth doesn’t take.)
And that’s by a rather roundabout route. As the crow flies it’s more like 3 miles. (Google Map) It depends on whether you’re measuring between campus centers, nearest points, “official” street addresses, or whatever else.
Well, UTEP can’t count for figuring distances from UNM since it’s south of NMSU. So there’s only one D-1A school in Texas to look at for the purposes of question 4.
After looking at Google Earth, I’m convinced that Las Vegas is furthest from anything. Vegas to Phoenix is about 250 as the crow flies, to LA is about 230 miles. Nothing else closer that I can think of.
To go between Rice & U of H, I’d probably just head down Fannin or Kirby to 610, and take it to 45, and exit Scott or Cullen. Pretty short really.
I’d have to guess that Texas A&M would be one of the ones furthest from a major airport. Sure, there’s an airport of sorts there (Easterwood), but it’s hardly “major”; you end up flying to Dallas or maybe Houston to get anywhere else.
Outside of Easterwood, the nearest major airport is Houston Bush Intercontinental, which is something on the order of 100 miles away.
Some are unclear on the idea of Div I-A (yes I know they renamed the subdivisions, but I don’t like the new names, so I still use Div I-A, I-AA, and I-AAA). These subdivision only apply to football. If your school plays Div I-AA football, it’s an Div I-AA school. In other sports like basketball, all three subdivisions are just in Div I. Div I-AAA, by the way, is the non-football-playing subdivision.
For most isolated school, lets use crow fly (instead of road) distances between the football stadiums. UW is somewhere around 218 miles from Oregon State, Boise State is roughly the same from Idaho. I haven’t had time to check the rest of the suggestions. I’ll get to them tomorrow.
For closest schools, use either crow-fly distances between stadiums or street distances between nominal addresses.
For distances from airports, use road distances (the football teams take buses between the airports and their schools). But no one seems to be answering that question anyway.
I haven’t had a chance to measure the distances using Google distance calculator, but I did find that someone had mapped all the Div I-A schools on Wikipedia: link. Just eyeballing it (and that map is probably not really accurate enough), it looks like Texas Tech is most remote.
As far as Easterwood Airport, Wiki says it has a 7000 ft runway, which I think is good enough for a large airliner. The airport doesn’t have to have scheduled service, just be big enough to handle a charter. Football teams, with maybe 80 players (that travel), 9 coaches, several managers, possibly a number of hangers-on, plus an incredible amount of equipment, require a full airliner just to travel. They virtually always charter one.
Most college teams send their equipment around the county on trucks. It costs too much to pay all the cargo charges.
When I go to UCLA games at the Rose Bowl, I usually walk by the trucks that the teams use for hauling the equipment around. A lot of schools decorate them in school colors. Others just rent trucks.
The University of Oklahoma had a couple trucks I think.
