Teams Scramble To Reach Destinations After FAA Lifts Nationwide Ground Stop

It was the longest shutdown of air space in the U.S. since the terrorist attacks of September 11. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

A nationwide ground stop imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday evening upended travel plans for sports teams across the country, and could impact the weekend sports schedule, most notably in college football.

The ground stop was lifted after roughly five hours, the longest U.S. airspace has been closed since September 11, 2001. The Associated Press reported that “Trump administration officials said Friday that new technology being added to the nation’s air traffic control system overloaded antiquated systems and caused ‘intermittent’ communications and radar gaps.”

As expected the shutdown had a significant impact on the sports world. According to ESPN, as of Friday night at least nine teams from the Power Four conferences were still waiting to leave for the site of their games this weekend: Arizona State (at Central Florida), Baylor (at BYU), Kansas State (at TCU) and Utah (at Arizona) of the Big 12; Minnesota (at Penn State) and Washington (at Michigan State) of the Big Ten; and Ole Miss (at Oklahoma), Tennessee (at Texas A&M) and Texas (at LSU) of the SEC. No ACC teams were impacted by the shutdown.

Of that group, the team with the farthest distance to travel is Arizona State, whose campus in Tempe, Arizona, is roughly 2,100 miles from UCF in Orlando, Florida. The Sun Devils are planning to fly across the country on Saturday for a game that was scheduled for 3:30 p.m. ET but got pushed back two hours to 5:30 p.m. ET because of the delay.

The New York Times reported that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he “encouraged college football teams to coordinate their flights with the FAA ‘to make sure we have games going off tomorrow.'”

Elsewhere in sports, the Kansas City Current were impacted as they tried to travel to New York for an NWSL semifinal against Gotham FC on Saturday. The league had not announced any change to the schedule as of Saturday night.

In college basketball, UNC Grensboro’s game against Cornell in Ithaca, New York, was postponed.

The groundstop was just the third this century in the United States. The first came on September 11, 2001, due to the terrorist attacks in the northeast. The second came on January 11, 2023, after the FAA’s system to alert pilots to safety issues went out.