Ole Miss releases statement detailing why it could not travel to Oklahoma in time for Saturday game
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Friday night’s ground stop of flights by the FAA impacted many of the teams traveling for Week 11 games. While some teams are playing through later-than-expected arrivals and some games adjusted their kickoff times, the Ole Miss–Oklahoma game felt the biggest impact as the game was moved to Sunday at 1 p.m.
Saturday afternoon, Ole Miss released a detailed statement explaining why it could not make it to Norman, Oklahoma, in time for a Saturday game against OU.
Like the rest of the nation, we faced unprecedented challenges with Friday’s ground stoppage. 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. After the stoppage was lifted at 7:30 p.m., we began preparing the team for departure before our charter broker, Air Planning, informed us that JetBlue could not fly us Friday night. At that hour, due to the time required to rescreen the party and travel to the Tupelo airport, the crew’s duty time would have expired prior to departure. 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. In addition, the flight crew’s duty time restrictions prevented us from being able to fly out until Saturday afternoon at the earliest.
“We understand other SEC teams were able to keep their games on Saturday, with those visiting teams having available Friday charters or ability to bus to their game in four hours. We did not have those advantages. We regret that the game had to be moved to Sunday, but we took every reasonable action in our power to avoid this scenario. The ground stoppage has been an unfortunate ordeal for all of us, and we are grateful that a solution was reached to play our game.
Ole Miss is ranked No. 19 in both the AP Top 25 and College Football Playoff selection committee rankings. The Rebels are 6-3 on the season, looking to bounce back from a blowout home loss to Georgia in Week 10.
Statement from Ole Miss on Friday’s travel problems following the national ground stop, and the move of the Oklahoma game to Sunday. https://t.co/XSYiMdMWYk
— Adam Rittenberg (@ESPNRittenberg) November 14, 2026
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaign of Fred Taylor.
