Travel issues are nothing new to college sports programs. However, a nationwide flight disruption the day before a huge weekend of college football is unprecedented territory.
Fortunately, before the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all domestic flights on Friday afternoon, the Texas Tech football team reportedly made it to Oklahoma, where they will take on Oklahoma State tomorrow night. That news has been reported by several sources, including David Ubben, a national college football writer for The Athletic.
This is an unprecedented issue facing college sports teams. Only once since the September 11, 2001, attacks on America has the FAA grounded all flights. In January of 2023, a system outage caused all flights to be grounded for around an hour in the morning.
Texas Tech made it to Oklahoma https://t.co/5RwBYKkUCn
— David Ubben (@davidubben) November 13, 2026
Friday’s nationwide grounding feels like it might take longer to lift. It has already been in place since 3:16 p.m. Central. That has left over 10,000 flights delayed and 1,700 canceled. Many of those will impact college sports teams and refereeing crews traveling to games scheduled for this weekend…