A missed class. A cross-country flight. Another strenuous night of make-up work with an impending practice scheduled mere hours after you slump into bed. Cue another flight, an online exam, all just to be followed by a halfhearted go at your next game, match or meet.

Then, do it all over again the next week.

In the wake of the NCAA’s college football-inspired conference realignment — or conference expansion, to those that it benefits — that’s the new, everyday reality that student athletes across the nation will have to accept. 

There’s no doubt that the sweeping wave of realignment, most notably the Big Ten’s additions of USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington, has already created an enticing future for college football starting in 2024. 

However, those undoubtedly entertaining USC – Michigan or Oregon – Ohio State football games on Saturday afternoons next fall come with a heavy price. 

Football is king for a reason, and there’s no argument against that. The sport’s sky-high popularity and corresponding revenue stream single-handedly fuel universities and their athletic departments’ budgets. In turn, lucrative moves for schools and conferences, such as USC and UCLA joining the Big Ten and Texas joining the SEC, are no-brainers for presidents, chancellors and directors.

However, those moves have consequences for nearly every other sport — namely Olympic-level sports such as soccer, softball, baseball, tennis and more — and the student athletes in those sports. Studies have shown that travel in college sports already has detrimental effects on a student athlete’s mental health, physical performance and social life.

And once conference realignment is officially put into action, those effects will only multiply. Imagine Oregon men’s soccer flying to Bloomington, Indiana for a Thursday night match or Rutgers softball being scheduled for a weekend series in Los Angeles. If it sounds like uncontrollable madness, it’s because it is. And ultimately, no scheduling genius can remedy these issues, especially with no real signs of realignment slowing down.

The floodgates have been opened. The conference realignment cat is out of the bag, and there’s no way to wrangle it back in.

While the SEC and Big Twelve aren’t totally innocent, their expansion has been to geographically-friendly schools. Oklahoma and Texas joining the SEC and schools like Colorado, Utah and Arizona moving to the Big Twelve are good examples of conferences adding schools that can reasonably fit within their respective regions.

However, in its never-ending quest to top the SEC, the Big Ten’s move to add four defining Pac-12 schools to a midwestern and east coast-centered conference makes it the main culprit of this case. By claiming USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington, the Big Ten has struck a killing blow to the PAC-12, leaving schools such as Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and more desperately clamoring for a new home. 

Enter Stanford and Cal’s campaign to join the ACC. While a vote among conference decision makers momentarily stopped the addition weeks ago, these schools won’t give up easily, and it’s for good reason. Getting left in the dust by their west coast brethren has more ramifications on those colleges and their student athletes.

Now, schools like Stanford lose out on the chance to play successful, in-conference competition in order to build their team’s resumes throughout the season. Forget about the highly-anticipated matches between Stanford and UCLA’s top-ranking women’s soccer teams. You can also forget about rivalries, such as those between multiple California schools or the Oregon – Oregon State rivalry.

Instead, student athletes will be forced to travel cross-country when schools find new homes, further contributing to largely unaddressed concerns about how conference realignment will affect the lifeblood of the NCAA — its athletes. 

The NCAA, especially the Big Ten conference, has thrown caution to the wind. Social life, mental health and peak performance be damned.

Who needs geographically-friendly conferences, resume-building matchups and traditional rivalries? Why worry about the student athlete when you have TV and media mega-deals to line your pockets?

So, is the damage done? Unfortunately, yes. Universities and athletes that have any stake in non-football sports will be drastically affected, especially with the threat of realignment looming over nearly every school in America.

With that, potential solutions to the ever-changing structure of these conferences come closer every day, and at this point, college football breaking off from the NCAA and forming its own organization seems inevitable. 

Additionally, each university becoming an independent entity — similar to how Notre Dame currently operates — could be a possibility, leaving schools to schedule games with whoever they want, whenever they want. However, those solutions would mean major renovations to the core structure of the NCAA and are several years or possibly decades away from happening.

In the meantime, though, we’ll see the true ramifications of the NCAA’s deal with the devil. While we’ll all enjoy our Saturday afternoons a bit more, it begs the ultimate question: What happens to everyone in every other sport?

The bill is about to be due for the NCAA, and it’ll be the Olympic-level sports and their student athletes all across the country who will pay the price.