False starts and delayed touchdowns.
Dozens of college football teams have called audibles and are scrambling to reach their destinations for this weekend’s games after the Federal Aviation Administration issued â and has since lifted â an extremely rare nationwide ground stop.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Friday night that travel officials would help stranded teams get to their games on Saturday after they were stuck at home and on the tarmac.
“As I mentioned, we’re going to allow for general aviation,” Duffy said during a press conference at the White House Friday night.
“Those larger movements to take place as a priority. Smaller movements will take a lower priority. And so if you talk about football teams moving, many of those are on charters and there’s a lot of individuals on those charter planes.”
“So I would encourage those football teams to reach out to the FAA, to schedule their flight times and make sure they can move to make sure we have games going off tomorrow.”
The FAA’s ground stop was announced Friday afternoon after air traffic control facilities experienced communication and radar instability issues, leaving thousands of flights grounded.
Duffy blamed the nationwide grounding on the “DECADES-OLD” air traffic control system running on analog equipment.
The ground stop was lifted just after 8:30 p.m., but it still left thousands of flights delayed and canceled, including some top FBS teams that were due to fly out Friday, a typical travel day in college sports.
Saturday’s College Football slate â its 11th of the season â will feature multiple start-time changes due to the FAA’s unprecedented move.
Top college teams affected by the flight suspension included a handful of Top-25 ranked teams such as Tennessee, Texas and Ole Miss.
Other programs impacted include Tulane, Baylor, San Jose, Washington, Minnesota, FAU, Utah, Arizona State, Auburn, Purdue and North Texas.
Auburn, Purdue, Tulane and North Texas were originally scheduled to travel by air Friday to their road games â instead opting to take buses to Mississippi State, Iowa, Houston and San Antonio, respectively.
Arizona State’s matchup against UCF, set for a 3:30 p.m. kickoff, was pushed back two hours as the Sun Devils announced they would be flying out of Tempe Saturday morning.
Across the Grand Canyon state, Arizona’s home game against No. 2 Utah was moved to 8:30 p.m. after the Utes couldn’t fly out because the pilots’ time had expired during the ground stop, Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported.
The Baylor-BYU game in Provo, Utah was moved from its original 1:30 p.m. start time to 5 p.m.
Ole Miss’s game against Oklahoma was up in the air early Saturday morning as the Rebels did not travel Friday with kickoff still scheduled for 4:15 p.m.
The two teams were in discussion with the SEC regarding the game with conference officials pushing for a Sunday kickoff after Ole Miss was unable to travel to Norman, Okla.
The Sooners strongly objected the date change and were warned about forfeiting the match if they declined to play Sunday.
âI understand that difficult decisions sometimes must be made under extraordinary circumstances. But those decisions must also consider the impact on everyone involved,â Oklahoma Athletic Director Roger Denny said in a statement, arguing the date change would impact gameday staff and fans who had scheduled for a Saturday game.
Several teams that had been stuck at airports had made it back on their flights and arrived at their destinations, without needing any kickoff time adjustments, including Tennessee and Texas.
The No. 8 Longhorns shared the team’s entire travel day saga to LSU, first posting a video of players boarding a plane at 3:48 p.m. with the caption “Bayou bound.”
Nearly an hour later, the team’s account showed the equipment trailer at a loading dock in Baton Rouge, La., before finally sharing an update of players reboarding a plane at 11:28 p.m., saying, *Now* weâre Bayou Bound.”
The kickoff times for Texas’ primetime game in Death Valley and the Volunteers’ matchup at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field were not affected by the hours-long delay.
