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What's the longest travel distance for conference college football game in 2025?
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- What's the longest travel distance for conference college football game in 2025?
This weekend in the Big Ten, Penn State football will look to rebound from a gutting loss to Oregon with a game at UCLA while undefeated Maryland will host Washington .
In the not-too-distant past, these would have been matchups between teams looking to break up the monotony of lopsided games against FCS and Group of Five opponents that dominate the early weeks of the college football season.
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Today, though, these are conference matchups.
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The kinds of pairings that would have seemed unthinkable only a handful of years ago are now commonplace, with schools from thousands of miles apart competing against one another in what are technically conference contests: The Big Ten stretches from New Jersey to California . The Big 12 has members in three different time zones and places as different as Utah and Florida . The ACC has two schools, Cal and Stanford , 3,000 miles away from the conference's eponymous Atlantic coast.
This rapid and dizzying round of realignment, which began with UCLA and USC 's move to the Big Ten, have redefined a sport that was once proudly regional and made something as simple as a road game a logistical headache.
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With several coast-to-coast games set to kick off this weekend, here's a look at the longest travel distances for college football games:
Longest travel distances for college football conference games
Though Penn State-UCLA narrowly missed the cut, Washington-Maryland is indeed one of the 20 longest distances between schools competing in a conference game.
For this exercise, only Power Four leagues were considered. If the Group of Five conferences were considered, whatever record already exists will be shattered in the coming years when Hawaii and Northern Illinois will face off at some point during a Mountain West game.
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The distances are between the schools' home stadiums and are based on the suggested driving route from Google Maps.
This list includes only games that have already been played or will be played this weekend. The two longest distances between opponents occurred in games played in September 2025 ( Boston College at Stanford on Sept. 13 and Cal at Boston College on Sept. 27).
Here are the top 20:
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Boston College at Stanford, 2025: 3,126 miles
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Cal at Boston College, 2025: 3,085 miles
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Miami at Cal, 2024: 3,015 miles
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Washington at Rutgers, 2024: 2,842 miles
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NC State at Cal, 2024:2,836 miles
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Stanford at Syracuse, 2024: 2,827 miles
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Stanford at Virginia , 2025: 2,826 miles
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(Tie) Stanford at NC State, 2024: 2,825 miles
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(Tie) Maryland at Oregon , 2024:2,825 miles
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Duke at Cal, 2025: 2,817 miles
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Syracuse at Cal, 2024: 2,786 miles
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Rutgers at USC, 2024: 2,756 miles
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Washington at Maryland, 2025: 2,748 miles
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UCLA at Rutgers, 2024: 2,745 miles
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Cal at Wake Forest, 2024: 2,740 miles
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Wake Forest at Stanford, 2024: 2,729 miles
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(Tie) Oregon at Penn State, 2025: 2,695 miles
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(Tie) Virginia Tech at Stanford, 2024: 2,695 miles
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USC at Maryland, 2024: 2,645 miles
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Washington at Penn State, 2024: 2,620 miles
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How far apart are UCLA and Penn State?
Penn State has made the trip to the Rose Bowl before, having participated in its namesake game three times since the 2008 season, but Saturday's game against the Bruins will mark the first time it has done so for a conference game.
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It'll be quite the lengthy journey, too. The Rose Bowl is 2,558 miles away from Beaver Stadium, the Nittany Lions' home venue.
Penn State encountered problems making the trip to southern California last season. In advance of his team's game at USC last year, Nittany Lions coach James Franklin said his team was unable to fly out of the State College Regional Airport, which didn't have a runway long enough to accommodate a plane that was large enough with a big enough fuel tank to allow Penn State to travel to Los Angeles without stopping for more gas. Instead, the Nittany Lions had to leave from an airport in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, about 90 miles to the southeast.
How far apart are Washington and Maryland?
Maryland's College Park campus is nestled in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., but this weekend, the Terrapins will be playing host to a team from a very different, much more distant Washington.
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Maryland's SECU Stadium and Washington's Husky Stadium are 2,748 miles apart, making it the 13th-greatest distance ever for a league game between major-conference opponents.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Longest travel distances for college football games in 2025
