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Out of all the World Cup Teams, the US will be flying the most miles to and from their games.
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When I checked out Yahoo Sport’s Infograph on it, it didn’t look so bad to me. Â This is how I know I am a crazy person.
The spacing of the World Cup tournaments does seem a little strange to me though. Â I couldn’t imagine there being a major competition in the USA where you had to travel from New Orleans to Minneapolis to Dallas and to Los Angeles— though if anyone has any historic knowledge of that happening, I’d love to hear it.
This traveling will also be done over two weeks. Â I wonder what carrier they are taking…
When the US hosted the Cup in 1994, the venues were in CA, TX, IL, MI, FL, NJ, MA & DC. Not sure how much flying back and forth teams had to do though.
It is quite conceivable for an NBA team based in Los Angeles to have to play the Minnesota Timberwolves, Dallas Stars, and New Orleans Pelicans in order to win the Western Conference and make it to the NBA Finals. Plus, each playoff series is on a 2-2-1-1-1 basis, meaning that if the series went seven games, the lower-seeded team would have to make three separate round-trips to each higher-seeded team’s home city. If all series went seven games, and if the LA team were the lower-seeded team throughout, it would have to travel triple the distance of the US World Cup team over a six-week period. Plus, if it won the Western Conference, its reward would be a seven-game showdown against an Eastern Conference team, which could be as far away as New York or Boston and could require three additional round-trip cross-country flights.
Correcting myself: the Dallas _Mavericks_ are the NBA team, while the Stars play in the NHL.
Also, the NFL playoffs probably provide a more pure example. There is no LA team, but if, say, the San Francisco 49ers were the #6 seed in the NFC, they would have to win three straight road games on successive weekends to make it to the Super Bowl. Given the other teams in the NFC (though perhaps not the way they’ve been playing lately), the path to the Super Bowl could easily run through Minneapolis (Vikings), New Orleans (Saints), and Dallas (Cowboys).