FAA Ground Stop Leaves College Football Teams Scrambling to Reach Saturday Games

The Arizona State Sun Devils postponed their flight to Orlando until Saturday morning, the Purdue Boilermakers boarded buses to Iowa, and the Colorado State Rams held an airport walk-through after a nationwide ground stop disrupted travel for college football teams a day before kickoff. The Federal Aviation Administration halted departures nationwide Friday afternoon after a communications problem affected regional air traffic control centers. Flights already in the air could still land. The FAA later said it would clear some departures as control centers recovered. Arizona State’s players got off their plane and were sent home to rest, ESPN reported. The Sun Devils planned to fly to Florida on Saturday morning, leaving them to make the cross-country trip the same day they were scheduled to face the UCF Knights at 3:30 p.m. Eastern. The Baylor Bears, Kansas State Wildcats and Utah Utes also faced travel delays Friday. The Big 12 said it was weighing changes to Saturday’s schedule. The stoppage also disrupted travel for two of Saturday’s biggest SEC games. The Tennessee Volunteers were waiting in Knoxville to leave for College Station, where they were scheduled to play the Texas A&M Aggies at 3 p.m. Eastern. The Texas Longhorns were held up in Austin ahead of their 7:30 p.m. game against the LSU Tigers in Baton Rouge, the New York Post reported. Teams within driving distance switched to buses. Purdue headed to Iowa City after its flight was delayed, Auburn took the road to Mississippi State, and North Texas did the same for its game against UTSA in San Antonio, ESPN reported. Colorado State used the wait to get in one last rehearsal. ESPN’s Pete Thamel posted footage of the Rams going through a walk-through at Northern Colorado Regional Airport. At the same time, they waited to fly to Pullman for Saturday night’s game against the Washington State Cougars. The Oregon State Beavers and Wyoming Cowboys were also waiting to leave for road games against the Boise State Broncos and UTEP Miners, respectively. Georgia Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart told The Paul Finebaum Show that some of his assistants were on the road recruiting Friday and needed to get back to Athens for Saturday’s home game against the Missouri Tigers. Smart said: The text thread is popping. We’re wondering how the officials are going to get to where they got to get to go and the teams, some of them are grounded and not to their locations yet. Maybe if we actually had regional conferences, we could just drive to the games. Missouri had already arrived in Athens. The Big Ten told ESPN that officials for all eight of its Saturday games were already on site. The ACC said all of its visiting teams had arrived before the order, though ESPN reported that some ACC officials were still grounded and that the conference could use seven-person crews if needed. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said FAA technicians were investigating the outage, which affected the country’s 22 regional air traffic control centers. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said officials had seen no indication of an attack. It was the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when a failure in a key FAA computer system briefly halted domestic departures. ABC News reported more than 4,000 flight cancellations by Friday evening.