College Football Teams Caught Up in Nationwide Flight Stoppage

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights in the United States on Friday until further notice “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety,” citing a “temporary communications outage.”

With no timeline for planes to get back in the air, numerous college football teams with games scheduled for Saturday are in limbo, waiting for the nationwide ground stop to lift so they can travel for away games. 

The Big Ten conference confirmed to Front Office Sports that Minnesota, Purdue, and Washington are all affected. Michigan is scheduled to play at Penn State, Purdue at Iowa, and Washington at Michigan State. All other road teams are grounded at their locations. 

The ACC confirmed to FOS that all football teams are at their respective sites for Saturday’s games. But Oregon State at Boise State, the site of this week’s ESPN’s College Gameday is affected as Oregon State has yet to depart to Boise. ESPN did not immediately respond to an FOS request for comment.

College football isn’t the only sport affected. The University of Southern California women’s basketball team announced via X that they are grounded in Los Angeles; the team is scheduled to play South Carolina on Sunday in Greenville, South Carolina. 

Aviation tracker FlightAware projects thousands of flights within and out of the United States are currently affected. Athletic conferences are still determining the most efficient way to proceed. 

“We are in the process of gathering information from all athletic teams since we have several sports competing on the road this weekend,” the Mountain West conference told FOS. 

The last nationwide ground stop was in January 2023, when a pilot notification system went down. Prior to that, a nationwide ground stop was issued after the September 11 attacks in 2001, prompting postponements across college athletics and professional sports leagues.