Traveling in the Big 12 means mostly chartered planes, sometimes smaller aircraft and, at times, multiple flights to get a team back to its campus.
All of the Big 12 and some schools in the Big Ten and SEC are in a unique travel situation because they're in small college towns. Some of the schools are hours away from a major metro city and airport.
No one from the Big 12 Conference on Monday said they now fear traveling on small aircraft after Saturday's tragic plane crash that killed 10 people, including eight affiliated with the Oklahoma State men's basketball program, in a snowstorm outside Denver. But it's simply a reality for a league where travel is a concern because of the potential of lost class time during the conference season.
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Colorado switches
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BOULDER, Colo. -- The Colorado men's and women's basketball
teams will fly commercial airlines for the rest of the season
instead of smaller charter planes.
University officials announced the switch Monday, two days after
a Beechcraft King Air 200 chartered by Oklahoma State University
crashed east of Denver, killing two basketball players and eight
other people associated with the team.
"It's just a question of safety," women's coach Ceal Barry
said of the change.
The change to commercial flights was to be effective Tuesday,
when Barry's team was to take a United Airlines flight to Austin,
Texas, for a game Wednesday against Texas. The men's team was to
take a commercial flight Friday to play the University of Nebraska
in Lincoln for a game the next day.
Commercial flights are expected to cost $30,000 to $40,000 for
each team for the rest of the season. It was unclear how that would
affect the athletic department's travel budget.
Associate athletic director Jon Burianek said the university
does not plan to scrap charter travel completely. The university
will evaluate next season's travel arrangements in March after the
end of the basketball season.
-- Associated Press
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"We all feel an attachment to this tragedy," Kansas State coach Jim Wooldridge said. "We all do the same thing. This really hits home. This isn't like a big plane crash in Asia."
Most Big 12 coaches met with their teams Monday or Sunday to discuss the tragedy. A number of players knew members of the traveling party and coaches knew members of the administrative staff who were killed in the crash.
"We use words like catastrophe and devastation to describe a game and this makes us realize what that really is," Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson said. "I talked to (OSU coach) Eddie Sutton for a long time (Monday) and you realize how tough these things are. This affected us all.
"We're affected and will think of this every day because our kids knew those kids and we take charters," Sampson said. "The Big Ten, Big 12, SEC schools use charter flights. The ACC, Pac-10 and schools on the coasts don't need to because they can go commercial. The smaller conferences can go by bus."
Colorado coach Ricardo Patton said his players were deeply saddened by the tragedy, considering they had just played the Cowboys and a number of his players knew Oklahoma State guard Daniel Lawson, one of two players who died in the crash. Lawson made a recruiting visit to Colorado before signing with Oklahoma State. Patton said he will no longer take his team on chartered flights and would rather travel commercial to put his players more at ease.
But Patton has the luxury of doing that because of the proximity of Boulder to Denver's airport.
Patton's fear that his players would be uneasy about flying was echoed by other Big 12 coaches during a conference call Monday. Texas A&M coach Melvin Watkins said he might have to do a deeper selling job to get his players to fly to their next game. He said he has a few players who are squeamish about flying and he counts himself as someone who shares that phobia. He said he has picked up recruits in smaller, private planes in major cities and small towns who had never been on flights.
"All of us are apprehensive whenever something happens, but the fact remains that this was a fluke and you can't live your life worrying about flukes," Baylor coach Dave Bliss said.
Kansas coach Roy Williams said he wouldn't get on a plane in bad weather if he felt it were unsafe. Sampson said the Sooners recently bused back from Lubbock, Texas, to Norman, Okla., because the plane they were waiting for could only land in nearby Abilene. He didn't want to bus to Abilene and then board a flight to Norman.
"Normally we fly two to three planes with nine people each and two pilots -- two lear jets and a King Air -- on our trips," Texas Tech coach James Dickey said. "I wouldn't put a player on a plane that I wouldn't put myself or my wife or my children on."
Oklahoma State and Texas Tech seemed to be two of the only schools that tend to fly multiple -- and smaller -- aircraft for games. The Cowboys used three planes to get from Colorado to Stillwater, Okla., Saturday, with two of the planes landing safely home. Most of the other schools use planes with a minimum of 30 seats. Missouri coach Quin Snyder said the Tigers used to take multiple flights to games before he arrived last year.
"I wanted to keep all the players on one plane altogether and we're trying to move more toward jet travel," Snyder said. "But our travel party is growing and we're facing the dilemma of what we're going to do."
Texas coach Rick Barnes said his players would have missed a week of class if the Longhorns didn't fly commercial from a road game at Oklahoma on Jan. 24 to their road game at Arizona on Jan. 27. A number of coaches concur that they would always rather charter during the week than on the weekend if given the choice.
"If we didn't charter, we would have to bus to Houston an hour and a half to two hours," Watkins said. "Then we would fly to another city and then bus another hour or two. That becomes a long day. It's more convenient to fly after the game to be in class the next day."
Nebraska coach Barry Collier said he feels completely safe on smaller planes, especially with his brothers being pilots. He said pilots wouldn't put themselves in situations where they didn't feel safe.
"The severity of the situation makes you overreact," Williams said. "When you're the guy sitting on a plane, it's always how comfortable you feel. If the weather is bad, we won't take chances."
Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com.
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ALSO SEE
OSU plane fell on land owned by colleague of victim
OSU's Sutton: 'I know God will help me through this'
OSU to review travel policy in wake of fatal plane crash
AUDIO VIDEO
 Steve Cyphers reports from Stillwater Okla.
RealVideo: 56.6 | ISDN | T1
 Eddie Sutton comments on having to speak with the families of the plane crash victims. (Courtesy Cowboys Sports Properties/Learfield Communications)
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RealAudio: 14.4 | 28.8 | 56.6
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