JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Nearly 65,000 miles - that's the combined distance universities of Washington, Oregon, UCLA and University of Southern California will travel this fall to play football games. They are the inaugural members of the Big Ten Conference. At the root of this coast-to-coast travel is a better shot at making the College Football Playoff, which expands this year from four teams to 12, and money - a slice of the $8 billion TV rights deal that the conference is set to receive in the coming years. Pat Chun didn't sign off on the University of Washington's conference switch, but he is now the athletic director tasked with leading the Huskies into the Big Ten era - a conference with a whopping 18 schools. Pat Chun, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
PAT CHUN: Juana, greetings from the beautiful city of Seattle.
SUMMERS: To a lot of onlookers, this conference change might look like it was made for televised football and basketball games, which of course stand to bring millions of dollars to Washington. But I want to talk for a minute about the other 20 varsity level sports. How were their scheduling needs and well-being factored in here?
CHUN: Well, I would say two things is college athletics is unique because one or two sports are the key revenue drivers. In our instance here on our campus, it's football and our men's basketball program. And television provides a great percentage of those resources. The young people that come to a school like ours at the University of Washington want to compete on the biggest stages and against the highest level of competition. The Big Ten provides that for us across the board. The challenges are going to be the uniqueness of travel. And those are things that we'll learn more as we go on throughout the whole year with our respective seasons. But the reality is the caliber of student athlete that comes to Washington wants to compete and win at the highest levels of sport.
SUMMERS: Of course. I mean, there will obviously be some adjustments, both in terms of league competition and then also those logistics you were just talking about. How long do you think it will take for you and former Pac-12 teams to sort of recalibrate to the degree that's necessary?
CHUN: It's going to take some time. The things that made us successful in our old conference, the Pac-12, no longer are advantages in a conference like the Big Ten. You know, obviously we head into this year with our traditional goals of winning conference championships and, you know, developing young people and trying to compete in one of the highest levels of sports. But the reality is a new conference is new opportunity and also brings us the opportunity to kind of do a lot of self-evaluation of things that we're doing right and things we can improve on.
SUMMERS: I just want to throw one data point in here. The University of Washington's football team will travel more than 17,000 miles for road games this year, and that is a lot of miles to log. Are there any concerns that...
CHUN: Yeah.
SUMMERS: ...Travel fatigue will affect either player performance on the field or in the classroom?
CHUN: We're making steps to mitigate. I mean, you know, at this level, it's private charters. We'll charter a plane or planes, depending on where we're headed. You know, traditionally, football of all varsity sports typically misses the least amount of school time over an academic year simply because of the number of games and when they're played on the weekend. So a lot of times, you know, there are a lot of scenarios in which young people actually don't miss any classes during a fall quarter or semester based on the school you're at.
So that will be a little bit of adjustment. We'll mitigate some of that by trying to go in a day early, knowing that the sport in itself just doesn't miss a lot of class time. If that were to happen, we'll take our academics with support staff on the road. We're really dialed in on nutrition and recovery as a football program, really one of the hallmarks of our head coach Jedd Fisch's player wellness. And that's mental health, that's physical wellness. We're cognizant of what the rigor will add but also head into this year with a very pragmatic plan to try to make sure that our young people are performing at their best.
SUMMERS: One other thing I've got to ask you about is, as someone who loves college sports - I went to a now SEC school. One of the best things about college sports, and particularly college football for me, is the sense of tradition and those rivalries that we all know and love. They go away. Those historic games that we all look forward to, they don't exist anymore. How do you think about that and what's lost there without those traditions?
CHUN: Fortunately for us in this move over, we're headed over with three of our Pac-12 foes that we've competed against for nearly a century. We've been able to retain our Apple Cup with our in-state rival, Washington State. So, you know, we've done our best to try to keep it. But the reality is we won't be able to play Washington State in every sport like we've played in the past. And, you know, although we'll be able to keep our rivalry with Oregon as a conference foe, you know, that just is a part of change.
But, you know, the ties that bind alums to universities is something very unique. There's something special about college sports. There's something special about being inside those competitive venues with your parents or your grandparents or your grandkids or kids and watching young people just try to go accomplish their goals and dreams. And our alums are a part of this. And it's just kind of the beauty of college sports.
SUMMERS: That's Pat Chun, athletic director with the University of Washington. Pat, thanks.
CHUN: Thanks for having me on.
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