With no charter flights in budget, Fresno State basketball challenged on court and off

Spring semester classes at Fresno State start on Friday, but the Bulldogs will not be taking notes in a lecture hall or reviewing a syllabus.

With no charter flights in the basketball budget this season they will be traveling to Wyoming for a Mountain West Conference game against the Cowboys, a seven-hour trek that kicks off a very challenging stretch on and off the court.

The Bulldogs not only play three of the next four games on the road, they will miss considerable class time at the start of the semester, the timing and length of this trip making the lack of charters more of an issue than in past seasons.

Rather than return home after playing the Cowboys and then hit the road again on Tuesday to play at Colorado State, the Bulldogs will spend the time between games in a hotel in Fort Collins, Colo.

Monday is a holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But the Bulldogs will end up missing the first day of classes on Friday, then Tuesday, Wednesday and likely Thursday, and then more class time next week when they have a Tuesday game at Air Force.

Players could miss seven of the first eight days in the semester depending on class schedules.

If charters were available, they might miss only two.

Fresno State is sending academic support personnel on the trip, athletics director Terry Tumey said.

“It’s just one of the difficulties of our conference, when we have to sometimes go on these longer journeys,” Tumey said. “Sometimes, the travel gets to be a little tougher. I think our academic support system and our mentorship system makes it a little easier for our student-athletes.”

Mountain West solutions

Missed classes are part of the deal for a Division I student-athlete, but this is a particularly rough stretch and many Mountain West athletics departments take steps to mitigate that time away from campus.

Around the conference this season …

Boise State provided its basketball program with three charter legs, all of them used on return trips from mid-week conference road games that allow its players to attend classes the following day.

Utah State will charter to and from five mid-week conference games.

Colorado State was on a charter to and from a Saturday game at Boise State when it had a quick turnaround with a game scheduled on Tuesday, and then coming back from a mid-week game at Nevada. It will charter the remainder of the season except when taking short bus trips to Wyoming (65 miles) and Air Force (150 miles).

UNLV typically takes a charter to and from every conference road game.

Nevada was on a charter returning from a mid-week non-conference game at BYU and from a Saturday game at Utah State when it had a quick turnaround with a conference game on Tuesday.

San Diego State had two charter legs this season and used them to get to and from a game at Wyoming, which is one of the toughest trips in a tough conference to navigate. The Aztecs also just finished a stretch where they played three of four on the road with a 64-55 victory at Fresno State, but San Diego State does not start its spring semester until Jan. 22.

San Jose State has no charters, but it does have much greater flexibility when traveling with three airports between San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco a short drive from campus.

‘We’d love to figure out a charter’

“If it could happen fiscally for both our men’s and our women’s program we’d love to figure out a charter,” Tumey said. “It’s difficult, particularly in a conference like ours where we do have some longer trips and the midweek games.

“Midweek games make it very difficult for student-athletes to garner some consistency. We really want them to excel academically and athletically. It would make a big difference, it really would. When we can do it, we try to do it.”

Fresno State last season had two charter legs – booking one after it had a commercial flight on a trip to Nevada canceled and finding there were no workable alternatives available at the last minute.

The other was a return trip from Colorado State, like this season, coming after spending five days on the road.

The Bulldogs played at Wyoming on a Saturday and had a game at Colorado State the following Wednesday, and rather than return to Fresno they hunkered down in Fort Collins, Colo.

That trip was at the end of January, two weeks into the spring semester.

This story was originally published January 17, 2020 at 8:54 AM.