NC College Football: Who’s taking the longest road trips in 2025?

For many North Carolina college football teams, the 2025 season will redefine the term “road trip.” 

This year’s schedule features more than 40 games where teams from the Old North State must travel 500+ miles to play.

Two Triangle schools will fly more than 2,800 miles for newly minted ACC games. Two other FBS schools have itineraries that include treks of 2,000+ miles for non-conference contests. Yet four more schools have slogs of roughly 1,000 miles or more. All for a three-hour college football game (and many to satisfy conference requirements).

Welcome to the 2025 season, sponsored by [Insert your travel agent here].

🚍 Key Takeaways from 2025 NC College Football Road Trips

Note: We used Google Maps to chart travel distances, measuring mileage from one campus to another

🧭 Extreme Cross-Country Travel (2,000+ miles)

Three ACC teams — Duke, UNC and Wake Forest — are literally going coast-to-coast. Appalachian State almost.

• Duke and UNC each travel 2,800+ miles to play at California, now an ACC partner
  Wake heads to Oregon State (2,779 miles) — nearly as far for an out-of-the-box non-conference affair.
  App State at Boise State (2,260 miles) stands as one of the most compelling Group of Five match-ups, but it still crosses multiple time zones. (App played at Wyoming in 2023).

✈️ FBS Teams Dominate the Mileage

• Of the top 10 longest trips, 6 are made by North Carolina FBS teams.
  
• East Carolina alone has three road trips of 800+ miles, including to UTSA (1,475 mi), Tulane (946 mi) and Florida Atlantic (802 mi).
• Duke (853 miles) and Charlotte (722 miles) also make the jaunt to New Orleans to face Tulane.
• NC State will visit familiar foes Miami (811 miles) and Notre Dame (723 miles) but the travel distance still is notable

🎓 FCS Schools Also Logging Long Miles

• NC Central’s trip to East Texas A&M (1,123 miles) leads the way.
• Davidson, NC A&T and Elon all crack 950+ mile road treks for conference games. Davidson isn’t new to this scene, competing for many years in what was the first real coast-to-coast conference – the non-scholarship Pioneer Football League that stretches from San Diego through the midwest and up-and-down the Atlantic seaboard.

🏈 D2 & D3 Teams Aren’t Off the Hook

• Chowan, Barton and Johnson C. Smith all will travel 500–839 miles, including a neutral-site game at Harvard for JCSU to start the season.
• Brevard, Methodist, Greensboro and North Carolina Wesleyan each will make 500+ mile trips in D3 play. 

🛣️Ten Longest 2025 Road Trips for NC College Football Teams

1. Duke at California – 2,805 miles
2. UNC at California – 2,802 miles
3. Wake Forest at Oregon State – 2,779 miles
4. App State at Boise State – 2,260 miles
5. ECU at UTSA – 1,475 miles
6. NC Central at East Texas A&M – 1,123 miles
7. Davidson at Drake (IA) – 1,033 miles
8. NC A&T at Maine – 984 miles
9. Elon at Maine – 971 miles
10. East Carolina at Tulane – 946 miles

🚨 Other 500+ Mile Matchups

• Duke at Tulane (853 mi)
• Chowan at West Florida (839 miles)
• Johnson C. Smith vs. Morehouse at Harvard, Mass. (833 miles)
• NC State at Miami (811 miles)
• East Carolina at Florida Atlantic (802 miles)
• Methodist at Belhaven, Miss. (763 miles)
• NC State at Notre Dame (723 miles)
• Charlotte at Tulane (722 miles)
• Greensboro at Belhaven (713 miles)
• Barton at West Alabama (705 miles)
• Gardner-Webb at Lindenwood, MO (686 miles)
• Davidson at Marist, NY (683 miles)
• Campbell at Rhode Island (682 miles)
• Charlotte at Army (663 miles)
• Gardner-Webb at Eastern Illinois (650 miles)
• Appalachian State at Southern Miss (648 miles)
• North Carolina Central at Florida A&M (642 miles)
• North Carolina at Syracuse (639 miles)
• Duke at Syracuse (627 miles)
• Duke at UConn (626 miles)
• North Carolina at Central Florida (626 miles)
• North Carolina Wesleyan at Huntingdon, Ala. (626 miles)
• North Carolina A&T at Stony Brook, NY (597 miles)
• North Carolina A&T at Central Florida (594 miles)
• Charlotte at USF (584 miles)
• Lenoir-Rhyne at West Florida (573 miles)
• Chowan at Shorter University, Ga. (561 miles)
• Brevard at Belhaven (550 miles)
• Methodist at Huntingdon (536 miles)
• North Carolina Wesleyan at LaGrange, Ga. (533 miles)
• Wake Forest at Florida State (525 miles)
• Davidson at Stetson, FL (510 miles)

✈️ Who’s Traveling the Most?

• East Carolina: Three road games of 800+ miles
• Duke: Four trips over 600 miles, including the longest to California
• Davidson, NC A&T, Methodist, Greensboro, North Carolina Wesleyan, Brevard and Chowan: All face cross-regional hauls at lower-division budgets

🏡 Closest Road Game?

Greensboro College at Guilford — a 6.0-mile crosstown rivalry known as the Soup Bowl.

Google Maps measures 10.5 miles between Duke’s Wallace Wade Stadium and UNC’s Kenan Stadium using US 15/US 501. The Tar Heels will host the Blue Devils this season.

If Catawba and Livingstone played this season, it would be just 1.8 miles between their Salisbury campuses.

🎯Want to see the complete 2025 “Master Schedule” for all of North Carolina’s teams? Click HERE.

🔍Looking for your favorite North Carolina team’s 2025 slate. Look HERE.