Ole Miss didn’t get to Norman on Friday night, and by the time the dust settled, the Rebels were stuck with a plane and no legal way to fly it.
That was the chain of events that pushed Saturday’s game at Oklahoma to Sunday, with kickoff now set for 1 p.m. ET (Noon CT) on the SEC Network.
Ole Miss said Saturday that the delay came after a nationwide FAA groundstop and a series of travel problems that left the team unable to leave until 4:20 p.m. CT Saturday.
“Like the rest of the nation, we faced unprecedented challenges with Friday’s ground stoppage,” Ole Miss said in a statement released Saturday afternoon, nearly an hour after its originally scheduled kickoff time at Oklahoma. “As we worked through the travel issues and uncertainty surrounding the situation in real time, the goal was always to fly to Norman Friday night and play the game Saturday.”
The FAA’s groundstop hit shortly before 3 p.m. CT Friday and was lifted at 7:15 p.m.
CT, more than four hours later. Ole Miss said it had planned to depart for Tupelo once the restriction was lifted, but its charter broker, Air Planning, told the school that JetBlue could not get the team to Oklahoma City Friday night.
From there, the logistics got even tighter. The Rebels were dealing with a 55-minute bus ride from Oxford to Tupelo Regional Airport, a small airport with little scheduled commercial traffic. Flight crews also were up against duty-time limits, and Ole Miss said that left no workable path to get out Friday night.
“There were no other flight options at that point, and we determined it was too late to put our student-athletes on a bus trip of eight or more hours,” Ole Miss said in a statement. “In addition, the flight crew’s duty time restrictions prevented us from being able to fly out until Saturday afternoon at the earliest.”
Flight crews must have at least 10 hours of rest between shifts, and sources told CBS Sports that Tupelo is not a JetBlue hub, which meant no relief crew was available to take over the charter. The Tupelo airport did not handle any arrivals or departures when the groundstop ended Friday night.
The SEC’s decision to move the game to Sunday set off a public dispute with Oklahoma. Sooners athletic director Roger Denny issued a “strong objection” to the conference office, and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told the school that not playing at the directed time would mean a forfeit.
“Put simply, this decision isn’t fair to our athletes, our institution or to Sooner Nation,” Denny said in a statement released early Saturday. “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.”
Denny also said Oklahoma believed Ole Miss had explored every avenue to get to Norman.
“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.”
Oklahoma also pointed to the effect on fans. Denny said the change created “a significant impact, particularly on our fans,” and added, “Those who have made travel arrangements, accommodations and personal plans around a Saturday game now face unnecessary disruption and hardship. Their time, commitment and investment deserve greater consideration than they were afforded in the conference’s decision tonight.”
Former Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops weighed in as well.
“This decision by Greg Sankey is absolutely wrong,” Stoops wrote on social media. “All of the Power Four teams found a way to make it to their games, but Ole Miss wouldn’t?”
Ole Miss said the issue was strictly about travel and timing, not a lack of effort. The school said it had wanted to fly to Norman Friday night and play Saturday, but the combination of the groundstop, airport limitations and crew restrictions made that impossible.
The game still matters. Oklahoma is 5-4 and 4-4 in the SEC, coming off a 23-7 win at Florida after a 42-7 home loss to now-No.
1 Georgia, and the Sooners are technically still alive in the CFP race. A Saturday game turned into a Sunday one, but the stakes around it didn’t change.
In Other News...
College GameDay Gave Oklahoma Fans A Wild Twist Amid Ole Miss Chaos
A telecommunications outage that rippled through air traffic control created plenty of headaches around the sport on Saturday, including a ground stop that helped force a change to the Oklahoma-Ole Miss schedule. While the Sooners and Rebels dealt with the fallout, ESPNs College GameDay still went on as planned at Boise State, giving college football fans a live look at how the days travel chaos was affecting the broader landscape.
Pat McAfee turned the disruption into part of the show, arriving on horseback in a nod to the travel problems that had already thrown the morning off course. The bit played well with the Boise State crowd, and it was a reminder that even on a messy day for logistics, GameDay can still find a way to lean into the moment. [Read more 🡒]
Oklahoma Fans Wont Like How This Ole Miss Decision Was Made
A scheduling wrinkle turned into a bigger headache for Oklahoma on Friday, when the SEC moved the Sooners game against Ole Miss from Saturday to Sunday because a nationwide FAA ground stoppage disrupted the Rebels travel plans. The matchup is now set for a noon kickoff, and television coverage has not yet been announced, leaving one more detail hanging over a game that was already drawing plenty of attention.
For Oklahoma, the frustration is less about the delay than the process behind it. The Sooners athletic director objected to the decision, and the leagues stance made the stakes clear: if the game could not be played Sunday, it would be a forfeit. For a conference race that already leaves little margin for error, it is the kind of ruling that can leave one side feeling like it had no real say in the matter. [Read more 🡒]
Oklahoma Blasts SEC Over Disruptive Ole Miss Decision
A chaotic travel day turned into a bigger football headache for Oklahoma when the SEC shifted its game at Ole Miss from Saturday to Sunday after a nationwide FAA groundstop snarled flights across the country. Oklahoma opposed the move, but the league made clear the game had to be played at the rescheduled time, even as Ole Miss dealt with its own travel problems and could not get to the field on time.
For the Sooners, the issue was not just the inconvenience of a one-day delay but the way the decision was handled under pressure. The leagues warning of a forfeit if the game was not played Sunday only sharpened the tension around a matchup already thrown off by circumstances well beyond the teams control, leaving Oklahoma to absorb the disruption and move on to an altered schedule. [Read more 🡒]