Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has suggested the FAA could assist college football teams in arranging flights for their Week 11 matchups.

Multiple programs were left stuck at airports or scrambling for backup travel options after Friday's nationwide ground stop, which suspended air traffic for approximately four hours. Among those affected were several ranked squads: No. 2 Utah, No. 6 Texas, No. 8 Tennessee, No. 19 Ole Miss, and No. 23 Arizona State.

The aviation halt ended around 8:30 p.m. ET, though travel disruptions were anticipated to persist due to the existing backlog. When asked whether government authorities were assisting college football teams in reaching their destinations before Saturday's contests, Duffy recommended contacting the FAA directly.

"As I mentioned, we're going to allow for general aviation," Duffy stated at the White House on Friday evening. "Those larger movements to take place as a priority. Smaller movements will take a lower priority. And so if you talk about football teams moving, many of those are on charters and there's a lot of individuals on those charter planes.

"So I would encourage those football teams to reach out to the FAA, to schedule their flight times and make sure they can move to make sure we have games going off tomorrow."

Social media users immediately expressed their anger at Duffy for hinting at college football teams receiving preferential treatment over ordinary U.S. citizens. "Glad to see his empathy for regular folks on display," one wrote, while another added, "While I appreciate that, what about those who are about to miss their cruise ships? Or trying to get home to their families? Or trying to be at the bedside of a sick loved one? Priorities please."

A third wrote: "What a dumba--. Read the damn room."

Prior to the ground stop being lifted, several programs — including Purdue and North Texas — had already modified their transportation arrangements and opted to travel by bus for their contests against Iowa and UTSA, respectively.

The SEC and Big 12 conferences also issued statements, confirming they were consulting with football programs to assess whether any modifications to the Week 11 schedule would be required following the travel disruptions.

Kickoff times for several matchups — including Kansas vs. West Virginia, Tulane vs. Rice, and Auburn vs. Mississippi State — were subsequently delayed, according to reports.

The ground stop order — triggered by a major communications failure impacting air traffic control centers nationwide — occurred a day after a worldwide Microsoft outage, though Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed the two events were not connected.

Mullin further stressed that no evidence suggested any "nefarious" activity presenting a national security threat was behind the aircraft groundings.

"There is no indication that we've had, no reason to believe, that as of right now this was a threat to the United States," Mullin told reporters at the White House.

Approximately 1.5 million travelers were impacted by the disruption on Friday, according to CNN. Duffy cautioned that it would "take some time" for air traffic to return to normal operations, stating, "It's going to be slow."