On Friday, a nationwide ground stop lasting over four hours led to thousands of flight cancellations and delays from coast to coast. As a result, we're getting some Sunday afternoon college football, with No. 19 Ole Miss playing Oklahoma in Norman because they couldn't arrive on their previous schedule.
Per Ole Miss, who was flying out of Tupelo about 50 miles from their campus in Oxford, the ground stop began just a few minutes before the team buses were scheduled to leave for the airport, at 4 p.m. Once they learned that the stop would last for hours, the players were allowed to go, and they were called for a team meeting at 8 p.m., just a little before stop was lifted. Still, it was apparently too late for them to salvage their journey that night, and the SEC ultimately pushed the game back a day as a result.
"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," the Ole Miss statement said. "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."
This is just one story of many from Friday night. I'm sure countless plans of all kinds had to be changed by travelers who realized they weren't going to be able to get where they wanted to go. You can't fault them for it, but that hasn't stopped Oklahoma from whining about the rescheduling anyway. On Saturday, athletic director Roger Denny ripped both the SEC and Ole Miss for missing the planned date, heavily implying that their weekend opponent didn't try hard enough to travel to the game in time.
"It's inexplicable," Denny said. "I can't wrap my mind around the fact that they can't find a way to get here. My concern is the level at which they were pushed to find a way to get here."
Denny went on: "For too long, we've allowed institutions to make decisions and create circumstances that are in their individual best interest but unequivocally against the broader interest of college football and our peers in the conference. The leaders of our industry haven't stepped in, and this is yet another example of that."
I understand that Denny was probably getting histrionic at least in part to placate the rich boosters steamed about their Saturday tailgate getting ruined. But the reasons he gave for Ole Miss possibly wanting to delay the game until Sunday—they wanted to play in rainier weather, they were chill about a shortened week because they're playing Wofford next Saturday—pale in comparison to the extremely obvious reason why the team didn't make it: There was a damn unprecedented catastrophe in the FAA. Frankly, if Denny wants to point his stink eye in any particular direction, maybe he should try Transportation Secretary Sean "I'm afraid of trains" Duffy or Homeland Security Sec. Markwayne "We call it SI, not AI" Mullin. Maybe it's too early to cast ultra-specific blame for the catastrophe, but it feels like it could be more than a coincidence that the dumbest administration in American history—one that's defined by its hostility to science, its capricious firings, and its malicious withholding of federal funds—was on the clock for this turmoil.
In Denny's telling, however, it sounds like Ole Miss just didn't want it bad enough—that government incompetence is merely an obstacle to overcome with increased effort. It's an obnoxious way to take a national crisis and recast it as individual adversity that needs to be beaten, but I guess you can't look to ADs or coaches for a thoughtful, measured take on the issue. I just hope no travelers forced to miss Saturday brunch had to deal with this kind of judgement.
