Just how long of a journey is it from Madison to USC and UCLA, anyway?

JR Radcliffe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
·2 min read
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Let's say you actually want to make the trip to see the Wisconsin Badgers play in southern California, which will be a recurring reality whether or not they reach the Rose Bowl thanks to the arrival of UCLA and USC into the Big Ten in 2024.

Exactly how long are we talking?

If you wanted to drive from, say, Camp Randall Stadium in Madison to the Rose Bowl Stadium, home of the UCLA Bruins, that's a good 1,961 miles by car according to Google maps, a projected 29-hour drive one way. To the LA Memorial Coliseum, where the USC Trojans play, it's 1,973 miles and also a 29-hour journey.

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Let's say your car impressively gets 30 miles per gallon on the highway and a gallon of gas is (conservatively) costing you an average of $5 per gallon when you make the coast-to-coast trip. It's slightly more than $650 round trip.

A flight from Milwaukee or Madison to Los Angeles (LAX) or nearby Burbank, California is projected between 3 1/2 to four hours.

That's a markedly longer distance than what was already the longest jaunt between Big Ten schools, a 19hour drive and 1,310 miles between Nebraska and Rutgers.

You could drive from Madison to Monterrey, Mexico or Banff in Alberta, Canada from the same starting point in less than 1,600 miles.

Meanwhile the journey from Piscataway, New Jersey (home of Rutgers) to the Rose Bowl is 2,747 miles and ... literally, Iceland is closer. The Nordic island nation's capital of Reykjavik is 2,632 miles away from Rutgers over a whole lot of ocean. It's about a 5 hour, 22-minute flight between Newark and Burbank.

More: Pac-12 powerhouses UCLA, USC joining Big Ten Conference in 2024

JR Radcliffe can be reached at (262) 361-9141 or jradcliffe@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JRRadcliffe.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: How far is trip between Wisconsin and USC, UCLA for Big Ten games?