Gotta do what your conference peers are doing, at least. Are they all chartering basketball flights? If so, then this is more of a necessity than a luxury.
The new moneyball- tell recruits charter flights are more dangerous and that money is root of evil and sell no NIL and no charters.... show clip of big bopper and richie valens as proof
What happens if alum from opposing teams have companies that pay NIL, and they pay the opposing players (dont tell them what team they support) but then make the athlete attend events or commercial filming at times that conflict with games
Naive question.......with so many sports with less than 30-40 travelers with staff/equipment. Pretty much every sport except football........at what point does it make financial sense to have your own mid-size jet vs relying on commercial that don't fly directly into many Sunbelt.cities (plus mid range busing from airport required) or flight charter availability.
Maybe it is time for "Air Louisiana"
To keep it busy.....Air Louisiana could be chartered for private use in non peak periods. summer/fall. So it's not all expense......but also as a revenue source.
We go to smaller towns not close to major airports that require multiple.links to get to. Boone, San Marcos, Statesboro, Troy, Jonesboro etc,. Only GA State is a 1 flight and your are there.....no 2nd flight & no cross state bus trips. Fly in....play.....fly to next stop/home.
My motive????? I really like winning on the road. Our team seems to have benefitted from keeping travel.time minimalized.
How to solve cost......
We need to add aeronautics degrees. Flying and engineering/maintenance......that way plane storage/maintenance is an academic expense vs athletic.
I don’t know details of what other schools in the league do as far as travel goes. I recall hearing a year ago that 3 of the new league schools charter frequently. Those are James Madison, Marshall, and Old Dominion. Makes sense those 3 schools would do so due to their location and available resources.
Finding a donor who subsidizes our charter flights may be the way to go here. Could do it for WBB, VB, and diamond sports as well. Football charters to all away games of distance. I think they bus to ULM, USA, and USM within the league. All of those trips are around 4 hours or less. I don’t know if a person exists that would be willing to help with transportation costs for our athletes. I seriously doubt one does considering the state of our RCAF and NIL efforts. Perhaps a way could be found to combine the NIL and transportation subsidy ideas together.
Zoom Zoom brought up Gonzaga earlier in the thread. Looked up an article from five years ago reporting Gonzaga schedules charter flights for men's and women's basketball. Maybe take the approach of using one of the fractional ownership corporate jets. Schedule the number of annual hours you can afford in advance.
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