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QuickTake:
With four road trips totaling nearly 17,000 miles, these Oregon football players have to get used to jet lag and cramming large bodies into small seats.
The Oregon Ducks brought Dillon Thieneman in for his experience.
Oregon’s junior safety has seen a lot in his two-plus seasons as a Big Ten starter — crucial for an Oregon secondary relying on a handful of underclassmen to produce.
But with the Oregon Ducks embarking on their first of four road trips eastward this season — this one from Eugene to Chicago for Saturday’s game against Northwestern — Thieneman is entering unknown territory.
He’s not sure where his seat is for the 1,800-mile flight.
“I don’t think you get to pick,” Thieneman said. “I think it’s just like, ‘You’re sitting here.’”
That’s not a major issue for Thieneman, who at 6-foot and 205 pounds can cram his way into any seat on Oregon’s chartered flight. For the 6-foot-5, 318-pound offensive lineman Emmanuel Pregnon, it’s a different story.
“That leg room — I will fight anybody for that leg room,” the redshirt senior said. “I just try to get an aisle seat and try to reason with the people on the plane. It’s kind of difficult having to sit in a seat in between, or sit in a window.”
Flying can be uncomfortable for anyone, but it becomes a little more pressing when, shortly after flying, an athlete is expected to compete at their best in front of a nationally televised audience.
And no contender in college football is logging more miles this season than the Ducks. After making trips east to Michigan, Wisconsin and Purdue in their inaugural Big Ten season, the Ducks return in season two with this trip to Northwestern, followed by Penn State, Rutgers and Iowa.
As the bird flies from stadium to stadium, the Ducks will travel 16,787 miles round trip during the 2025 regular season — trailing only Hawaii (29,700 miles round trip) and Stanford (23,600).
How does that differ from some of Oregon’s competitors in the Big Ten?
- Ohio State will travel 6,100 miles round-trip.
- Penn State will travel 7,562 miles.
- Washington will travel 14,100 miles.
How about the SEC?
- LSU will travel 4,200 miles.
- Alabama will travel 3,000 miles.
- Georgia will travel 1,850 miles and the Bulldogs’ longest road trip — 630 miles round trip to Mississippi State — is barely longer than Oregon’s shortest trip: the 502 miles up and back to Husky Stadium in Seattle.
It’s not ideal. It’s also what Oregon agreed to following its departure from the Pac-12.
“When you get up there, you get some swelling in your legs and stuff, so just making sure you stay active and work that out and stress that it’s a business trip,” Thieneman said. “You’re not just going on a trip to go on a trip, you’re going on a trip to go to a game.”
The Ducks handled their business on the road in 2024. They thumped Michigan 35-17 on their longest trip of the year, recorded their first shutout in 13 years on the trip to Purdue and saw few differences in total offense (451 yards per game at home, 444 on the road) and defense (303 YPG allowed at home, 250 on the road) playing at Autzen versus playing on the road.
Plus, it’s not like that time up in the air is wasted.
“I have a book,” Dan Lanning said. “Read a little bit of a book. Do a little bit of film review, look at some scripts for walk-throughs. Some game day prep.
“[Make] decisions that are usually getting made on Thursday nights anyway, just not necessarily on a plane.”
The hope for the Ducks is that little time is lost in airtime — important for a team whose 11 a.m. local kickoff Saturday comes with a 9 a.m. body-clock time. But with the right preparation — and hopefully that aisle seat — Pregnon sees himself and the Ducks coming out spry.
“As far as the mentality that you’re coming with, you wanna start fast, so you can build now,” Pregnon said. “That’s how I’m thinking about preparing for such an early game like that. So when I come out on Saturday at 9 a.m., I’m punching somebody in the mouth right from the jump.”
