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MWC Travel

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WyoBrandX

Well-known member
I'm not sure if this belongs in the basketball, football, or another forum, so I just figured I would post here.

I was watching a game last week where one of the announcers talked about how hard it is to travel to Laramie. I'm not sure which game that was now.

This got me to thinkin'. What is the distance from DIA to Front Range Schools?

DIA -> Fort Collins 70 Miles (1 h 7 min)
DIA -> Laramie 136 Miles ( 2 h 10 min)
DIA -> Colorado Springs 87 Miles (1 h 21 min)

I don't know if teams fly in to DIA and drive to AFA or Fort Collins or fly directly. I know some teams charter into Laramie.

This really makes me wonder what people are complaining about. Granted, I'd love to see Laramie work up some deals on game days to get some cheaper flights in.

Does anyone know how the other teams get to the Front Range Schools? How about USU?

Edit: I had flipped Fort Collins and Laramie's Drive Time (rtj1 pointed out the time was off)
 
Looks like you are a little off on the time from Laramie to DIA, but I get your point.

Everyone has to fly to Denver, board a bus, and then travel. The only discrepancy is distance on the bus.

Laramie is just a little farther and it can have worse roads in the winter, but I think your point is a good one.

The "Laramie is hard to get to" thing is largely overblown by both opponents, WYO coaches (with regards to recruiting), and WYO administration (with regards to how hard things are at WYO).

With that said, if our University continually states how hard things are at WYO for athletics because of location, why wouldn't opponents, broadcasters, etc.?
 
Yes poor us, 136 miles (according to Google) from one of the largest airports in the world and one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country. So isolated.
 
Yeah. I don't get it. Proximity to Denver is one of the nicest things about living in Laramie. You have easy access to all that Denver has to offer, but don't have to live in the rat race or pay CO state income tax.
 
I don't quite understand it either. It doesn't appear to be all that isolated in comparison to other front range schools.

I just did a quick check for Utah schools to Salt Lake International.

SLC -> Utah State University 87 Miles ( 1h 27 min)
SLC -> BYU 48 Miles (51 min)
SLC -> UU 10 Miles (21 min)
 
Other schools blow this way out of proportion IMO. Football teams CHOOSE to not fly in to Laramie. When the Wyo football team goes somewhere (besides CSU and AFA), they fly out of Laramie. So conversely, any visiting team could fly in to Laramie, but they choose to stay in either Cheyenne or Fort Collins, so DIA makes more sense.

As for basketball, I don't see any reason why they couldn't fly in to Laramie and stay in one of the hotels in town, a typical BBall travel party is only about 25-30 people.
 
Teams aren't flying into Laramie because the only way for it to work logistically is to charter flights. Have you seen the commercial planes coming into Laramie? You'd need your football team to take at least a dozen different flights if you want your whole roster here, basketball teams and staff will have a hard time all fitting on one of those flights as well. And with chartering being the only option to get directly to Laramie, teams don't have it in the budget to do that regularly, at least not for nonconference games. And while Laramie is comparable distance to DIA as other schools to major airports, Wyoming roads are so unpredictable that teams can't risk any weather delays to follow strict flight/school/team schedules.
 
cali2wyo said:
Teams aren't flying into Laramie because the only way for it to work logistically is to charter flights. Have you seen the commercial planes coming into Laramie? You'd need your football team to take at least a dozen different flights if you want your whole roster here, basketball teams and staff will have a hard time all fitting on one of those flights as well. And with chartering being the only option to get directly to Laramie, teams don't have it in the budget to do that regularly, at least not for nonconference games. And while Laramie is comparable distance to DIA as other schools to major airports, Wyoming roads are so unpredictable that teams can't risk any weather delays to follow strict flight/school/team schedules.
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College football teams charter all the time. In fact, I would put good money on the fact that the vast majority of FBS teams charter whenever they fly. Their budgets are built to easily accommodate this type of thing, plus a lot of schools have special sponsorship deals with a specific airline to be "The official airline of _____ athletics".
 
PRetty sure our football team charters everywhere and most teams we play charter in. Easier to do for football than basketball only 6 or less flights to charter.
 
Exactly, even the teams that fly in to DIA are arriving on a charter, not a commerical. So they can't complain about transport, because they are choosing to fly to Denver instead of directly in to Laramie.
 
WestWYOPoke said:
Exactly, even the teams that fly in to DIA are arriving on a charter, not a commerical. So they can't complain about transport, because they are choosing to fly to Denver instead of directly in to Laramie.
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To be fair, the Laramie airport can't support anything bigger than a 727. When we flew back from the NCAA tournament in 2002 on a 737 we had to land in Cheyenne because the runway in Laramie wasn't long enough.
 
And I think it has been mentioned that the runway has been lengthened to handle bigger planes. Not sure if that includes bigger than 727 but it seemed like it has happened more recent than 2002 but I don't know.
 
I'm far from an expert on airplanes and airplane related stuff. I did some digging for the hell of it anyways.

https://nfdc.faa.gov/nfdcApps/services/airportLookup/airportDisplay.jsp?airportId=LAR" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://aircyber.weebly.com/aircraft-runway-requirements.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It looks like Laramie could land many different planes. Much of it depends on the weight of the plane and wind conditions. They probably should extend that other runway.

From what I can tell, its at least as good of place to land as Fort Collins/Loveland.
https://nfdc.faa.gov/nfdcApps/services/airportLookup/airportDisplay.jsp?airportId=FNL" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And this site is pretty cool in itself:
http://flightaware.com/live/airport/KLAR" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
One interesting thing about the 50k people option. It would be really cool if UW could look at trying to increase their enrollment. Today, enrollment is around 13k. Adding another 13k would put us pretty close to schools in the conference (enrollment wise).

Another way to look at it. Look at TCU's enrollment history. They have considerable increase in attendance since they started winning at football.
 
How many students are enrolled at TCU?

Texas Christian University has a total undergraduate enrollment of 8,640, with a gender distribution of 40.5 percent male students and 59.5 percent female students. At this school, 48 percent of the students live in college-owned, -operated, or -affiliated housing and 52 percent of students live off campus.
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Seriously - these guys kick our asses - we have a hell of alot more resources than them. We are certainly doing something wrong. It is as simple as that. Our education needs to improve. Our athletics need to improve. Our attendance needs to improve. We are heavily subsidised - but we don't need to be.

Its time to cut the fat and make it work.
 
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