The Long Road to the 2022 Final Four: How Far Will Each NCAA Tournament Team Have to Travel?

We’ve heard it before: The Road to the Final Four is long and painful.  But exactly how long is it?  For some of the teams, it seems like they always get opening round games right down the road1.  For the rest of us, it seems like our team has to cross nine time zones to even get to the Sweet 16. Well, I did the work so you didn’t have to. Using some base assumptions, I plugged in the numbers to see who, exactly, has the longest way still to go.  The answer may surprise you.

Assumptions:

  1. During the NCAA tournament, the NCAA itself charters aircraft to bring teams to games. I assume that they generally use the closest reasonable airport. In major metro areas I tend to use the “major” airport, but I realize that Cincinnati might fly out of Lunken Field instead of Cincinnati2 International Airport, the numbers do not materially change.  I promise, I tested.  When I did this for 2018’s Major League Baseball season, people got really mad about this. I re-ran the numbers and they changed by less than .01%, so settle down.
  2. Given that for under 350 miles teams are bused, this assumes the point to point distance (as the crow flies) rather than road distance on shorter journeys. This is done to maintain apples-to-apples comparisons.
  3. Play-in teams will NOT go home after Dayton, but proceed to the next stop on their journey.  For the rest of the venues, once they advance through their region, they will go home on Saturday or Sunday and fly on to the next region the following Wednesday or whatever.  So in this example, Purdue goes home after Indianapolis and after Philadelphia (should they make it that far).
  4. Since this is mileage TO the Final Four, I don’t consider a trip home. That would be some different article that’s less interesting.

Okay, enough assumptions!

Results:

In total, all 68 teams would travel 333,890 miles (which is up 10% (30,922) miles from 2019 should they all decide to meet in New Orleans and watch each other, and it would look like this:

The entire 2022 NCAA Tournament flight plan

Unfortunately for 64 of them, that’s not how it will work. Here are some individual statistics. The average First a look at the average distance traveled by seed:

Seed
Mileage
3
2882
1
3287
2
3685
15
3880
14
3982
9
4446
13
4945
4
5207
5
5270
12
5297
7
5298
6
5301
11
5607
8
5889
10
6080
16
6459.5

Longest overall journey to the Final Four: Rutgers, with a play-in game in Dayton, then immediately out to San Diego before potentially having to go all the way back to Newark before headed all the way back to San Francisco. All of this plus the trip to New Orleans brings the total travel of 10,766 miles to get to the Final Four. Here’s the map:

St. Mary’s has the longest path in the 2019 NCAA Tournament

Shortest overall journey to the Final Four: Wisconsin. Who could’ve seen this one coming after the Badgers got put in the Milwaukee Pod and the Chicago Regional. This journey looks a lot less challenging than their Big Ten counterpart Rutgers’s’s’s:

Cincinnati has the shortest journey to the Final Four in 2019.

Longest journey to the Final Four for a 1 seed: Gonzaga, who at 3,915 miles, will travel only one and a half times as far as the shortest traveling 1 seed (Kansas).

Shortest journey to the Final Four for a 16 seed: Norfolk State, 3,788 miles. One can dream, can they not?.

Average journey by region: Midwest (3,738), South (4,525), East (4,826), West (6,551)

Seed with shortest average journey: Three seed with an average of 2,883 miles. Largely on the back of Wisconsin being the overall #1 as well as Purdue’s short journey.

Seed with longest average journey: 16, averaging 6,450 miles. Thanks to play-in games and some really far west pods this year

Here’s the raw data so you can see how your team stacks up…

Full results by team:

Region
Seed
Team
Home airport
1st Four
64/32
16/8
Final Four
Total travel
Midwest
3
Wisconsin
KMSN
MKE
ORD
MSY
1273
Midwest
15
Jacksonville State
KGAD
GSP
ORD
MSY
1949
East
2
Kentucky
KLEX
IND
PHL
MSY
1976
Midwest
11
Iowa State
KAMW
MKE
ORD
MSY
2036
Midwest
2
Auburn
KCSG
GSP
ORD
MSY
2158
East
3
Purdue
KLAF
MKE
PHL
MSY
2346
Midwest
1
Kansas
KLWC
DFW
ORD
MSY
2422
East
7
Murray State
KPAH
IND
PHL
MSY
2466
Midwest
5
Iowa
KIOW
BUF
ORD
MSY
2510
East
11
Virginia Tech
KROA
MKE
PHL
MSY
2541
East
15
Saint Peter's
KEWR
IND
PHL
MSY
2616
Midwest
9
Creighton
KOMA
DFW
ORD
MSY
2839
South
5
Houston
KHOU
PIT
SAT
MSY
2949
Midwest
12
Richmond
KRIC
BUF
ORD
MSY
2955
South
12
UAB
KBHM
PIT
SAT
MSY
3006
South
3
Tennessee
KTYS
IND
SAT
MSY
3029
South
13
Chattanooga
KCHA
PIT
SAT
MSY
3110
East
14
Yale
KHVN
MKE
PHL
MSY
3116
South
9
TCU
KDFW
SAN
SAT
MSY
3283
East
1
Baylor
KACT
DFW
PHL
MSY
3320
South
7
Ohio State
KCMH
PIT
SAT
MSY
3374
South
4
Illinois
KCMI
PIT
SAT
MSY
3406
Midwest
6
LSU
KBTR
MKE
ORD
MSY
3433
West
8
Boise St
KBOI
PDX
SFO
MSY
3439
South
1
Arizona
KTUS
SAN
SAT
MSY
3493
East
8
North Carolina
KRDU
DFW
PHL
MSY
3576
Midwest
14
Colgate
KSYR
MKE
ORD
MSY
3603
South
10
Loyola-Chicago
KORD
PIT
SAT
MSY
3744
South
11
Michigan
KARB
IND
SAT
MSY
3754
East
16
Norfolk State
KORF
DFW
PHL
MSY
3788
Midwest
4
Providence
KPVD
BUF
ORD
MSY
3791
Midwest
13
South Dakota State
KBKX
BUF
ORD
MSY
3827
West
1
Gonzaga
KGEG
PDX
SFO
MSY
3915
East
9
Marquette
KMKE
DFW
PHL
MSY
3989
South
14
Longwood
KLYH
IND
SAT
MSY
4114
Midwest
16
Texas Southern
KHOU
DAY
DFW
ORD
MSY
4244
Midwest
10
Miami
KMIA
GSP
ORD
MSY
4343
South
15
Delaware
KILG
PIT
SAT
MSY
4513
South
2
Villanova
KPHL
PIT
SAT
MSY
4615
South
6
Colorado State
KFNL
IND
SAT
MSY
4760
West
3
Texas Tech
KLBB
SAN
SFO
MSY
4881
Midwest
16
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
KCRP
DAY
DFW
ORD
MSY
5048
West
14
Montana State
KBZN
SAN
SFO
MSY
5094
East
6
Texas
KAUS
MKE
PHL
MSY
5369
West
10
Davidson
KCLT
GSP
SFO
MSY
5393
West
4
Arkansas
KXNA
BUF
SFO
MSY
5489
East
13
Akron
KCAK
PDX
PHL
MSY
5728
East
12
Indiana
KBMG
DAY
PDX
PHL
MSY
5871
West
2
Duke
KRDU
GSP
SFO
MSY
5990
West
7
Michigan State
KLAN
GSP
SFO
MSY
6080
West
12
New Mexico State
KLRU
BUF
SFO
MSY
6300
West
15
Cal State-Fullerton
KSNA
GSP
SFO
MSY
6443
South
16
Wright State
KDAY
DAY
SAN
SAT
MSY
6707
West
13
Vermont
KBTV
BUF
SFO
MSY
7115
West
5
Connecticut
KBDL
BUF
SFO
MSY
7162
Midwest
8
San Diego State
KSAN
DFW
ORD
MSY
7386
West
6
Alabama
KTCL
SAN
SFO
MSY
7644
West
9
Memphis
KMEM
PDX
SFO
MSY
7671
East
5
Saint Mary's
KOAK
PDX
PHL
MSY
8012
East
4
UCLA
KLAX
PDX
PHL
MSY
8140
East
12
Wyoming
KLAR
DAY
PDX
PHL
MSY
8355
West
11
Notre Dame
KSBN
DAY
SAN
SFO
MSY
8554
West
16
Georgia State
KATL
PDX
SFO
MSY
9047
South
8
Seton Hall
KEWR
SAN
SAT
MSY
9156
Midwest
7
USC
KLAX
GSP
ORD
MSY
9273
South
16
Bryant
KPVD
DAY
SAN
SAT
MSY
9923
East
10
San Francisco
KSFO
IND
PHL
MSY
10840
West
11
Rutgers
KEWR
DAY
SAN
SFO
MSY
11150
  1. Duke has to go ALL THE WAY TO SAN FRANCISCO THIS YEAR, WOOHOO
  2. Covington*