FAA ground stop puts college football, basketball travel plans in limbo

The Federal Aviation Administration’s choice to ground all flights across the country for more than 4 hours Friday sent out college and expert sports groups rushing as they took a trip to video games over the weekend.The FAA pointed out interaction issues at local air traffic control service centers, stating the ground stop was enforced “due to amazing scenarios and factors for security,” The Associated Press reportedThe statement came at around 4:15 p.m. Eastern time on what is usually a hectic travel day for college football groups, which usually fly on Fridays ahead of their Saturday video games. By approximately 8:30 p.m. ET Friday– about 4 hours and 15 minutes after stating the stop– the FAA raised the ground stop, enabling flights to resume. How rapidly those grounded groups might set in motion and get into the air stayed uncertain Friday night. College, professional groups dealing with prevalent travel problemsTransport Secretary Sean Duffy stated Friday night that the company would offer greater concern to basic air travel and lower concern to “smaller movements” such as charter airplane. Straight dealing with the sports travel concern, he included that “if you’re talking about football teams moving, many of those are 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 those flight times, so they can move and make sure we have games going off tomorrow.”

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While many college teams made it to their destinations Friday, media reports and social media posts indicated several teams were dealing with travel issues. The Athletic reported that more than a dozen programs — including No. 2 Utah, No. 6 Texas and No. 8 Tennessee — were affected as of late Friday afternoon. Utah is scheduled to play at Arizona, Texas is playing at LSU in a game with massive College Football Playoff implications and Tennessee is taking on Texas A&M.

The Big 12 is “examining prospective modifications to Saturday’s football schedule,” it said in a statement to Yahoo Sports. One option could involve swapping time slots with other games, the outlet reported.

The travel issues were wide-ranging. Washington’s football team was sitting in buses awaiting its flight to Michigan State, Fox 13 Seattle reported. Colorado State’s team was grounded ahead of its trip to Washington State, according to The Coloradan. Kansas State, scheduled to play at TCU, also had yet to depart as of Friday afternoon, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported. UNLV was unable to board its charter flight to its game against New Mexico, News 3 in Las Vegas reported.

Mississippi was grounded ahead of its trip to Oklahoma and was expected to meet at its facility at 8 p.m. ET, according to On3. With Auburn’s flight to Mississippi State grounded, the Tigers were instead busing to Starkville, On3 reported.

Five NBA teams were scheduled to fly Friday for Saturday games, the AP reported. The Brooklyn Nets’ flight to Memphis was halted Friday in New Orleans, where they had played the Pelicans earlier in the week. Other teams including the Cleveland Cavaliers, Chicago Bulls and Memphis Grizzlies were due to fly Friday night after playing that evening, the AP reported.

In women’s basketball, No. 3 Southern California had not left as of Friday afternoon for its game Sunday against top-ranked South Carolina in Greenville, S.C., Trojans coach Lindsay Gottlieb told The Athletic.