From Louisiana to Hawai'i to North Carolina, college athletic departments are seeking to reduce travel costs in a big way. Every dollar saved this year is critical, and innovative solutions are popping up everywhere.

At the NCAA Division II level, the Pacific West Conference will adopt a "pod" scheduling format to help reduce travel costs in women's volleyball, softball, and men's and women's soccer beginning in 2010-11. The system allows teams to play imbalanced schedules, with more games against other schools in their pod or region, rather than the traditional home-and-home format.

The nine-team league will use three pods. One includes its four Hawai'i schools, another groups its three San Francisco universities, and the smallest pod consists of the two southwest schools.

Athletic directors in the conference have also adjusted schedules for the current 2009-10 school year in all sports to allow for afternoon games on "weekend getaway dates," which will help reduce lodging costs. "This could reduce institutional travel costs by tens of thousands of dollars over the next couple of years," PacWest Commissioner Bob Hogue told The NCAA News.

Cost-saving measures are also being explored at the national level in Division II, where its Championships Committee has proposed reducing the Baseball Championship from eight to six days and the number of teams in the men's and women's tennis playoffs from 64 to 48. For volleyball and men's and women's basketball, a contingency plan is in place to allow eight-team regionals to be played at more than one site if all teams must fly to the host site.

In addition, the Division II Presidents Council has approved a proposal that would reduce the maximum number of contests in eight sports. Men's and women's soccer and field hockey would go from 20 to 18 contest dates, women's volleyball from 28 to 26, baseball from 56 to 50, men's and women's golf from 24 to 21, and softball would have its tournament exception eliminated. The proposals will be voted on at the 2010 NCAA Convention in January.

At the Division III level, the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC), which features schools in nine states from Georgia to Colorado, has taken the lead in implementing new travel policies. All of its members will schedule 10 percent fewer games than the maximum allowed in Division III for the 2010-11 school year in all sports except football. Other measures include a more clearly defined travel squad size for each sport, a conference-wide lodging program, increased multi-team travel, and more Friday-Saturday competitions.

In addition, visiting teams now have the ability to use their hosts' campus dining halls, when feasible, and the conference plans to coordinate schedules in baseball and softball to allow teams to travel together. Conference officials believe the cuts will save the league's members over $500,000.

Conference USA, which includes 12 schools stretching from Texas to North Carolina, is one of the hardest hit Division I conferences. Its biggest news is the reduction of teams that qualify for some postseason tournaments. Fewer teams will compete for titles in men's and women's soccer, baseball, softball, and volleyball in 2009-10, while the men's and women's basketball tournaments will be combined and held during the same four-day stretch at the same location in March.

C-USA has also modified its regular season schedules in baseball and women's soccer to reduce days on the road and is considering moving to divisional play in men's and women's basketball, beginning with the 2010-11 season. It is also decreasing the permitted size of travel squads in many sports.

In Louisiana, where state funding for athletics was eliminated, the University of New Orleans is considering holding "virtual" swim meets, according to The Advocate. UNO's swim teams would compete in their own pool and compare times to other teams at their own home pools.

At the national level in Division I, legislation has been introduced to eliminate foreign travel and regional track and field meets that precede nationals. Another proposal would not allow football teams to sleep at hotels the night before a home game.