I hate the SEC.

So much.

But that's beside the point.

Tonight, again, I will write about a pertinent subject and the aviation consequences. Last week, I blogged about the Iowa caucuses and the packed airplanes that would follow.

The next day, along with the myriad of full airline flights, there were ten private and chartered flights between Des Moines and Manchester - New Hampshire's main airport. The flights were full of journalists, essential campaign staffers, and of course, candidates.

But onto the BCS National Championship Game of tonight:

Today, there were only five flights between Columbus and New Orleans, but this past weekend has seen more flights than usual, obviously. There have been more than 10 charter airline flights from the Columbus area in the past few days, from both CMH and LCK. Some of these flights are operated by little known charter carriers like Miami Air, Champion Air, but also mainline carriers like Southwest and AirTran.

Sports charters are an interesting business, and most professional teams contract out with an airline, partly because of the marketing opportunities for the airline (for the cheaper costs - making that particular airline "the airline" of XYZ Sportsteam), but also because of the flexibility airlines offer with aircraft size and availability. It also depends on the sport played - baseball, basketball and hockey teams often have their own flight departments, because of the large number of out of town games played. Pro football teams, on the other hand, almost always (with the exception of a few, notably the Seattle Seahawks, from their owner, Microsoft founder Paul Allen) contract with an airline.

College teams, however, are similar to NFL teams, because they play few away games. And it just wouldn't be feasible for most colleges to own their own aircraft for sports travel.

But, I need to watch the newest edition of The Colbert Report (or should I say, the Col-berT ReporT), as Ohio State is losing it again, making everyone else think the Big Ten sucks and the SEC rocks.

Damn SEC.