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The Ole Miss–Oklahoma game has been rescheduled to Sunday at 1 p.m. ET as a result of Saturday’s Federal Aviation Administration ground stop, according to a statement released by the SEC on Friday night.
The announcement came at 12:12 a.m., when the SEC said Ole Miss couldn’t find accommodations through its contracted charter company and couldn’t fly out Saturday afternoon. The game was originally scheduled for 4:15 p.m. Saturday. The television network is TBA.
Oklahoma AD Roger Denny released a statement simultaneously expressing his disapproval of the reschedule. Oklahoma and Ole Miss are the first FBS matchup to be postponed to another day. Denny stated that after several discussions, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey informed him that Oklahoma’s failure to play on Sunday would result in a forfeit.
“We were told that Ole Miss explored every avenue to travel to Norman and play on Saturday as planned,” Denny said. “But, unlike every other team traveling for competition tomorrow, they were unable to find a solution.
“Put simply, this decision isn’t fair to our athletes, our institution, or to Sooner Nation. But we’ve been given no other choice. We are obligated to play the game when directed, but we remain steadfast in our belief that the wrong outcome was reached this evening.”
Several FBS Games Postponed
The FAA grounded all flights in the U.S. on Friday afternoon until further notice “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” citing a “temporary communications outage.” The FAA lifted the ground stop at 8:15 p.m. after a near four-hour delay, with thousands of flights impacted.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy addressed potential game delays during a briefing at the White House on Friday night.
“We’re going to allow for general aviation [and] those larger movements to take place as a priority,” Duffy said. “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.”
Numerous college football teams with games scheduled for Saturday were in limbo during the stoppage, with several games being postponed from their original times. The following games have been postponed to a later time on Saturday, listed in order of kickoff time (all times ET):
- Auburn-Mississippi State moved from noon to 4:15 p.m.
- Tulane-Rice moved from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
- Arizona State-UCF moved from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
- Kansas-West Virginia moved up to 3:30 p.m. from 5:30 p.m.
- Michigan State-Washington moved from 4:15 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
- Baylor-BYU moved from 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.
- Florida Atlantic-Tulsa moved from 3:30 p.m. to 7:15 p.m.
- Arizona-Utah moved from 8:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
The last nationwide ground stop was in January 2023, when a pilot notification system went down. Before that, a nationwide ground stop was issued after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, prompting postponements across college athletics and professional sports leagues.
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