Friday’s FAA chaos put college football travel plans in a blender, but the people who keep the sport moving did their jobs and saved a messy weekend from getting even messier. The Federal Aviation Administration’s third nationwide ground stop in history, triggered by a mass communication outage, sent schedules into disarray and left teams scrambling.
Colorado State even had to hold a walkthrough on a tarmac. By Saturday morning, though, only one game - Mississippi-Oklahoma, a certified fiasco - had been pushed to Sunday.
That kind of damage control doesn’t happen by accident. It happened because the sport’s travel staffers moved fast under pressure, and they deserve their flowers.
Kerry Callender and Mary Marsden at Utah, Laura Barlow at Tennessee, Wayne Langbein and Nicole Wood at Washington, and plenty of others around the country helped keep this weekend intact. For a profession that usually works in the background, Friday was a reminder of just how much these unsung heroes matter.
On the field, Wisconsin’s season keeps taking strange turns. The Badgers entered Saturday with a last-five-game stretch that looked like a weekly mood swing: a blowout over Michigan State, a 17-7 loss at UCLA, a 24-7 win over USC that seemed like a breakthrough, a 30-0 no-show against Iowa, and a 31-10 win over Rutgers.
Then Maryland arrived, playing with a new edge under interim coach Aazaar Abdul-Rahim, and rallied from a 10-0 deficit to put a serious dent in Wisconsin’s faint Big Ten title hopes. The quarterback situation in Madison is still unsettled, but the bigger issue is the defense, which let Maryland quarterback Cardell Williams go 21-of-23 for 183 yards and a touchdown while also scoring twice on the ground.
Wake Forest, meanwhile, turned disrespect into fuel and flattened SMU in Texas. Barely favored and sitting at No. 13 in this week’s CFP standings, the Demon Deacons came out swinging and built a 42-0 halftime lead, not far off from last Saturday’s 49-0 edge over Merrimack at the break.
They also converted 12 of 18 third- and fourth-down chances, a ruthless number that told the whole story. Jake Dickert delivered the line of the day when he said SMU had “nowhere to hide” at halftime.
If this team misses the CFP - even with a hypothetical second ACC championship loss to Miami - the sport will be worse for it.
Northwestern also let a chance slip away against Ohio State. Every team that loses to the worst Ohio State team in 15 years is wasting an opening, and the Wildcats did exactly that.
They were without star quarterback Aidan Chiles, but that didn’t excuse the missed opportunity after three takeaways and a surprisingly cautious approach from a Chip Kelly-coordinated offense. Given the gap between Northwestern’s play last season and this one, the 2026 record can’t look like 7-6 again.
With Minnesota and Illinois still ahead, that’s suddenly in play.
In Other News...
Wisconsin Commit Kingston Allen Just Showed Why Everyone Wants Him
Kingston Allen keeps making the kind of statement that turns a recruiting commitment into a full-blown national storyline. The Notre Dame Academy running back broke multiple Wisconsin high school rushing records against Union Grove High School, including the career rushing yards mark, while scoring three touchdowns in a 21-17 win that sent his team into the championship game.
For Wisconsin, the appeal is obvious and only getting stronger. Allen has stayed committed to the Badgers even as Ohio State and Alabama have come calling, and performances like this are exactly why the pressure around his recruitment is unlikely to fade anytime soon. [Read more 🡒]
Wisconsin May Have Lost A Key Defender For Much Longer Than Saturday
The Badgers may be bracing for more than just a short-term absence after senior safety Matt Jung went down with a serious right leg injury in Saturdays game. Jung made a huge play by dislodging the ball at the goal line, but the moment quickly turned grim as he was visibly in pain, needed a cart and a leg brace to leave the field, and left Wisconsins defense with a major concern.
Jung is expected to miss the remainder of the season, a tough blow for a veteran presence in the secondary and for a defense that also saw Mason Posa and Javan Robinson leave with injuries. For Wisconsin, the immediate challenge is not just replacing production, but trying to steady a unit that suddenly looks a lot thinner after one of its most physical games of the year. [Read more 🡒]
Wisconsins Offense Just Put Jeff Grimes Back Under The Spotlight
Wisconsins 24-21 loss to Maryland put the focus right back on Jeff Grimes and the direction of the offense. After a stretch in which freshman quarterback Ryan Hopkins had been given a little more freedom, the Badgers leaned back into a conservative approach that left the unit looking stuck and predictable, even as some of the backs showed they could have been part of a more balanced plan.
Hopkins never found much room to breathe, finishing with 72 passing yards and three fumbles while operating under steady pressure. The bigger issue for Wisconsin is that the game plan seemed to limit the quarterback rather than help him, and with the offense again underperforming, the questions around Grimes have only grown louder, with Luke Fickells broader offensive direction now part of the conversation too. [Read more 🡒]