Saving gasoline by going to the SEC
by BirdGT on Jun 9, 2010 8:00 AM EDT
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PrintLet's start with the current ACC Coastal Slate. Currently, Tech fans have to drive about 6 hours to reach any of our Coastal opponents and Clemson (excluding the Miami drive). I purposely pulled Miami because I don't think many Tech fans make this drive. More would fly or simply not go. I think Maryland and Boston College are both outside of sane driving range as well. The chart I came up with shows you how far of a drive each current, regular ACC opponent's hometown is from Atlanta via Google Maps. It also shows how many driving hours are required to reach the destination, how many gallons of gas will be burned (20 mpg average), and how much this would cost gas-wise ($2.50/gallon).
Please note that every freakin' trip is long as Hell. 5 to 6 hour drives are the norm for Tech fans in the ACC. If Tech sent 2,000 fans to each road game and every fan carpooled with 3 other Tech fans, then Tech would be sending 500 cars to every drive-able road game (excluding pink cities). If the average gallons burned per road trip is ~35 gallons, then Tech fans would be burning up 17,500 gallons of gas every road game.
So let's look at a greener model in which Tech has joined the SEC-East. The following chart shows my system in which Tech still maintains an 8 game conference slate of all SEC-East teams (something Yakub2 and myself have been debating about the 16 team conference). Our 8 game SEC-East slate would only have one insane road trip (Miami) and 6 teams closer than every single current ACC opponent besides Clemson and Wake. Here's the chart:
All of sudden our average drive time for road trips drops from 6 hours to 3.5 hours. We'd be burning only 10,200 gallons of gas/weekend trip (a 42% reduction). That means the Tech collective could be spending almost 18 grand more PER WEEKEND on more important aspects of the tailgate. Of course, this is all assuming the same amount of people would travel to every road game every weekend. And you never really know with Tech fans. Either way, I thought it was an interesting look into the expansion talks...
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$2.50 a gallon
Are you serious? Its $2.50 a gal down in the ATL? Its $2.70 here in Charlotte.
http://inthebleachers.net
by InTheBleachers on Jun 9, 2010 8:09 AM EDT via mobile reply actions
Yeah
It’s $2.53 close to where I live in Jax, FL, but I’ve seen it as low as $2.42 in other areas of town.
I recently got it for $2.44 in Macon, GA on the way into ATL, and $2.38 n Perry, GA on the way back to FL.
"You could spend the next fifteen seconds of your life watching a man and a tiger scream together, or you could be an idiot."
Fact.
Got family in Perry
Always the cheapest gas I see all summer.
http://inthebleachers.net
by InTheBleachers on Jun 9, 2010 11:20 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Go to the SEC? Go Green?
It’s certainly not a bad fit for Georgia Tech. Also goes to show just how ideal a location Atlanta is for the SECCG, at least for the SEC East teams.
Being in the Atlantic sucks. Every other year, we have road trips to Tallahassee, Raleigh, College Park, Boston, or Winston-Salem. Our closest regular opponent is two hours away in the opposite division. :-p
Clemson in the SEC East, along with GT, would make a whole lot of sense distance wise for us.
To Atlanta: 2 hours
To Athens: 1.5 hours (actually closer to Clemson than Columbia is)
To Knoxville: 3.5 hours (about as close as Winston-Salem, our closest Atlantic rival)
Lexington is a pretty long drive, but it’s still around six hours.
Gainesville is an even bigger hike, but it’s still closer than College Park by over a hundred miles.
Boston just doesn’t work for anyone who doesn’t want to fly. College Park is the closest ACC city to there, and it’s eight hours away by car.
Recd for saving the planet
Under that plan, most of the SEC WEST would be closer than our current division.
Plus the conference title game would be within a leisurely stroll.
Longest Atlanta Falcons winning-seasons streak: 2008 - current
The Falcoholic · Blog · Twitter
Thank you for your priceless insight, ope dog. Yes, we don't intend to suit up for the SEC championship game; we intend to spectate.
While we’re all in decent shape, we’re hardly ready to step on the field with a major conference title on the line. Glad we could clear up for you the fact that none of us are currently on Georgia Tech’s football roster.
Longest Atlanta Falcons winning-seasons streak: 2008 - current
The Falcoholic · Blog · Twitter
For the record
I drove to Miami and back twice last season.
Just call me Winfield the Planet Killer!
by Winfield Featherston on Jun 9, 2010 9:14 AM EDT reply actions
Flying
Last I checked Atlanta was home to one of the largest airports in the country. Wouldn’t flying be more “green” anyway?
I don’t really like the SEC, but I like their money, so I’m torn on this decision. This analysis is interesting, but it doesn’t sway me one way or another…maybe I just don’t care about the Earth enough. I don’t know.
Not sure
Sounds like we need to find someone in the airline industry that could break down fuel costs per person per flight. I’m currently under the impression that it costs more and uses more fuel to fly than it is to drive. Then again, we are talking about 500 vehicles in the above example.
"You could spend the next fifteen seconds of your life watching a man and a tiger scream together, or you could be an idiot."
Fact.
From an EPA report in 2003
In 2003, about 81 percent of transportation GHG emissions in the United States came from "on-road" vehicles, including passenger cars, sport-utility vehicles (SUVs), vans, motorcycles, and medium- and heavy-duty trucks and buses (Figure 2-2). "Light-duty" vehicles, which are used primarily for personal transport, accounted for 62 percent of total transportation emissions. This category consists of passenger cars, (35 percent of the transportation total), "light-duty trucks," including SUVs, minivans and pickup trucks (27 percent), and motorcycles (less than 1 percent). Heavy-duty vehicles, which include trucks and buses, were responsible for 19 percent of total transportation emissions.
Non-road transportation sources produced 16 percent of all transportation GHG emissions in 2003. Aircraft were the largest non-road source, producing 9 percent of total transportation GHGs. Other non-road sources include boats and ships (3 percent), rail (2 percent), and pipelines (2 percent)
by Winfield Featherston on Jun 9, 2010 10:11 AM EDT up reply actions
What you want to look for...
is CO2e per person per mile traveled for each mode of transportation. Then, you could tell if flying is greener than driving. I truncated the long distance drives because driving 10 hours to a football game is ludicrous if you can fly for $100-150 bucks.
With no powers, comes no responsibility.
You forgot to calculate for trucks
There are more side-effects of transferring to the SEC than you accounted for. For one, what happens when the Tech fanbase trades in all the Subarus and Toyotas for used pickup trucks with the Stars & Bars painted on the windshield? Or how about the global warming caused by adding a million voices to the hot air about SEC dominance, let alone handling all of the biosolids from the associated increase in bull[French word] on the Internet.
Plus, turning every GT fan into an SEC tard will double the amount of trash-talk between Atlanta and Athens every year. And what happens when the clean-cut Yellowjackets start coating the recruiting trail with SEC sleaze and scuzz, meanwhile firing coaches after two years of 9-4 causes the impatient fans to have a nuclear meltdown — I ain’t writing the E.I.P. for that.
Despite the gas mileage situation, I would much rather you guys stay in the ACC beside like-minded academic institutions like NC, Duke, Virginia et al., where we Midwesterners can have a rooting interest without feeling like we’re voting for George Wallace, and from where sports journalists can pull human interest stories about Calvin Johnson saving African villages rather than cataloging long-term exploitation of NCAA loopholes to oversign recruiting classes.
The world has enough SEC teams. Don’t add any more.
A week ago Saturday lastly
My ears were assaulted quite ghastly
When I clicked on a link
Before stopping to think
I wound up at a song by Rick Astley
by Misopogon on Jun 9, 2010 3:19 PM EDT reply actions 2 recs
Unfortunately...
The suits and the old timey alum are in control at Tech and that means we’re probably leaning towards the SEC if anywhere not named the ACC.
With no powers, comes no responsibility.
Well said my friend!!
I think you’ve described the SEC perfectly.
Agreed
And Reck’d!
Personally, I’m somewhat on the fence. On one hand, I have always known GT in the ACC, so while I fully know and understand the history of GT in the SEC, being in the ACC just seems right. We have built rivalries and traditions within the conference and I’d like most of them to remain. However, I understand the money and popularity aspects of being in the SEC. It would allow us to rekindle some old rivalries that I never got to partake in and I think the competition would increase in some areas, so I totally understand the draw to it.
Plus, when thinking about this single item in the whole conference shuffle picture, it leads me to debating the premise of it all, which is another discussion entirely. I really don’t see how this would change things as it relates to the championship unless all of the teams within these newly formed super-conferences agree to cut the fat from the schedules and play more games. If we are still talking about an 8/4 schedule split in a total 12 game season, then the only real positive to this whole mess is money and supposed reputation. However, if we are talking about expanding the regular season as well as playing more conference games, then maybe it would be more worth it imo.
Regardless, I’m pretty sure most teams will follow the money trail leaving the fans scattered in their wake. It’s definitely interesting and something that will undoubtably change the face of college football. How one deals with that will ultimately decide if it’s truly a success or not.
"You could spend the next fifteen seconds of your life watching a man and a tiger scream together, or you could be an idiot."
Fact.
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