College football’s Saturday TV slate appears likely to take a hit from the FAA‘s decision Friday to impose a ground halt on all U.S. airline traffic, which in turn could disrupt many network sports schedules on a busy weekend.
The agency late Friday began allowing flights to depart after more than four hours in a stoppage that saw more than 800 flights diverted and more than 10,000 overall impacted by the first such incident since 9/11. The FAA and the Department of Transportation blamed a “communication issue” that forced the shutdown “due to extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety.”
In the world of college football, ABC, CBS, NBC, ESPN, Fox and The CW are among networks facing possible game postponements. Media outlets spent the day determining whether teams had either already made it to their game sites, were in the air at the time of the stoppage or had not left their home airports before the shutdown.
Some schools quickly took alternate means of transportation, with the University of Alabama driving to Nashville for its game against Vanderbilt, while Purdue is taking a bus to Iowa State as is Auburn to Mississippi State, according to the Associated Press. USC arrived ahead of the ban for its game at Indiana, while Boston College made it to South Bend, IN for its game with Notre Dame.
The University of Texas, due to travel to play LSU in one of the day’s marquee games, were among several teams forced to deplane before takeoff, like the University of Washington before their trip to Michigan State.
Statement from the Southeastern Conference on FAA nationwide ground stop: pic.twitter.com/IIU4TnwMVJ
Two Friday night games involving ranked teams will have complications for the visitors returning home, with Illinois at UCLA and Houston at Colorado.
The NBA is also likely to see some shifting of games, but its Saturday slate is fairly low-wattage compared with Friday night’s Prime Video doubleheader. One story that percolated today: the Brooklyn Nets got stuck on the tarmac in New Orleans trying to get to Memphis to play the Grizzlies on Saturday.
The top draw in TV sports, the NFL, seems to have caught a break with the schedule. New England and Detroit are set to play in Germany on Sunday morning, but teams typically travel well in advance of international games in order to adjust to the time difference, meaning they were onsite when the FAA order was given. Depending on the length of the shutdown, there could be a question about the return flights to the U.S.
Across the rest of the NFL’s Sunday slate, most games are due to be played by teams within 500 miles of each other, meaning a Saturday bus trip wouldn’t be out of the question. Exceptions include the San Francisco 49ers playing at the Dallas Cowboys; the Seattle Seahawks at the Las Vegas Raiders; and the Miami Dolphins at the Indianapolis Colts.
In soccer, the U.S. Men’s National Team and Haiti both made it to Miami ahead of their CONCACAF Nation’s League game Saturday. It airs live at 4:30 p.m. ET on TBS, truTV, HBO Max, Universo and Peacock.
Patrick Hipes contributed to this report.
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