From the LSU chancellor – 11 years ago.
Hate seeing what’s going on.
I feel for the athletes and coaches at USC and UCLA. Heck the fans too.
The traveling into central and eastern times zones on a consistent basis will take a toll. The expense of being a Bruin or Trojan fan just went way up if you want to go to road games.
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I remember a USC alum/fan who had attended every single Trojan game for like 70 years (obviously had a fair amount of money to do that; he was a phone company executive). WMS in the 70s? He was there, twice. And in one of those things a Hollywood scriptwriter would say was hokey, he died at halftime of the 1998 USC-UCLA game – in the parking lot of the Rose Bowl. His name was Giles Pellerin, and he went to 797 consecutive SC games.
But that streak also required like 34 trips to South Bend. And – get this – he hated flying. Drove or rode the train or bus to games whenever possible (obviously when the Trojans played in Tokyo in '85, he flew reluctantly). My guess is he drove to Little Rock; not sure you could depend on Amtrak or Greyhound (Amtrak right now would take 55 hours from LA to LR and go through Kansas City and St. Louis).
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I predict two Collegiate conferences, Purely professional and basically amateur.
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What a fan! Won’t see many more like that - great story
His brother Oliver, who was there with him when he died in the parking lot, ran up a streak of 637 games himself. Both brothers died in their 90s.
Giles once walked out of the hospital after surgery to go to a home game; he told the nurses he was going for a walk. He estimated he had traveled 650,000 miles to see USC football.
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The new Big Ten will be extremely spread out, but it’s not like the league they’re leaving was geographically compact either. It’s 882 air miles from LA to Pullman, and 1061 from Tucson to Pullman. LA to Lincoln is 1279 miles, about 1700 to Iowa City and goes up from there, but 882 is still quite a haul.
Meanwhile, it’s 956 air miles from XNA to Gainesville. And 962 from Norman to the Swamp in the new SEC (Austin is slightly closer). CoMo is actually somewhat closer to Gainesville than XNA.
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