Now that West Virginia University will officially make it to the Big 12 next season, fans are looking for their way there too.
Since the schedule was released this week, football fans are already planning their trips to Big 12 country, which is definitely new territory for Mountaineers.
"In the last two days, since the announcement of West Virginia going to the Big 12, there's been a real rash of people and interest for people to go to our first game on October 6th," said Stephen Douglas WVU Alumni Association President, "an away game at the University of Texas."
Local travel agencies and the alumni association are already working on package deals for the trip to Austin. Douglas said hotels there are already taking reservations for the weekend, so fans who are looking to travel to any of the conference games this year will probably want to plan ahead.
"When fans are traveling to away game sites, it's not going to be like the Big East where a family could say in the middle of the week wake up and decide ‘hey let's go to the Rutgers game' and they can plan it in a day or two and be there at the game," Douglas said. "It's going to require a little advance planning because of the distance of these venues."
That's good news for the Morgantown Municipal Airport, which is already working with the Greater Morgantown Convention and Visitors Bureau to reel in more interest.
"We're starting to actually see some folks who have been coming here," airport director Michael Clow said. "We had the Cincinnati basketball team here. They flew a charter aircraft in a couple of weeks ago and we're hearing from other folks who are either coming to Morgantown for games or running charter flights in and out that they would actually like to come to Morgantown rather than come to one of the other airports around and having to bus back and forth."
Douglas said the alumni association is working on plans for charter flights for fans, but they will likely fly out of the North Central West Virginia Airport in Bridgeport because it can land larger planes.
It will be an adjustment for all fans who are still willing to go the distance.
"It's kind of like going west," Douglas said, "and it'll be the wild, wild west for us in the first year or two and we'll try to learn how to do these things well and that's part of the excitement."
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