Friday turned into a waiting game for a group of college football teams with road trips to make. A nationwide Federal Aviation Administration ground stop kept Texas, Utah, and several other programs grounded, and with kickoffs looming, Saturday’s slate suddenly looked uncertain.

Texas’ trip to LSU and unbeaten Utah’s visit to Arizona are among the games in question. Fans are naturally stunned, with some suggesting teams take buses and others calling for a one-day postponement.

Fans React As FAA Ground Stop Affects Texas, Utah, 7 Other Teams

The FAA halted departures on Friday over communications problems at regional air traffic control centers. Texas, Ole Miss and Tennessee from the SEC; Baylor, Kansas State, Utah and Arizona State from the Big 12; and Minnesota and Washington from the Big Ten were all still waiting for the green light.

“We are grounded and waiting to see when we can leave,” a Texas team spokesman said. Texas, 7-2, is due at LSU for a 7:30 p.m. ET kickoff Saturday, the same hour 9-0 Utah, atop the Big 12 standings, visits Arizona.

Mizzou football reporter Michael Stamps put it plainly: “Genuinely crazy and unprecedented situation.”

Friday’s order was the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023, when an FAA computer system failed.

One fan minced no words: “Too much money at stake for these games to not happen this weekend. They will get done. It might be Sunday, but they’ll play.”

The SEC, which also has Tennessee headed to Texas A&M and Ole Miss headed to Oklahoma, addressed the chance of changes in a statement.

“We will continue to monitor developments and work with our institutions to determine whether any adjustments to scheduled competitions become necessary,” the conference said.

Arizona State, for one, still plans to play Saturday. The team got off its plane and headed home to rest before a planned Saturday morning flight to Orlando for its 3:30 p.m. ET game at UCF.

Another fan summed it up this way, “There may need to be a Super Sunday in college football.”

Meanwhile, several other teams decided not to wait around. Purdue, Auburn and North Texas switched to buses after their flights were delayed, ESPN reported. For Purdue, that meant a roughly five-hour ride to Iowa City.

Oregon State, however, was still stuck. The Beavers, due at Boise State for a 6 p.m. ET kickoff Saturday, had not yet left for Idaho, according to ESPN.

This fan saw a bus as the answer: “Would have to imagine that Oregon State can hop on a bus if needed. Not ideal but manageable.”

One user on X had a similar plan for Texas: “It’s a 6-hour and 30-minute drive from Austin to Baton Rouge. They better get on a bus and quit playing.”

Notably, one conference largely dodged the travel mess. The ACC told ESPN that all of its visiting teams reached their game sites before the ground stop, and CFB Talk Daily took notice, writing, “ACC is the only conference that has it all together. As we all predicted.”

However, the ACC is not entirely in the clear. Some of the officials assigned to ACC games were stuck on the ground, a source told ESPN, though the league could get by with seven-official crews if it had to. The Big Ten, meanwhile, had every official for its eight Saturday games already in place.

The two marquee trips carry real playoff weight. Pro Football Network’s College Football Playoff Meter, as of early Friday, gives Texas an 86.9% chance to make the playoff, 98.2% with a win in Baton Rouge and 73.9% with a loss. The Playoff Meter puts Utah’s chance to make the playoffs at 96.7%.

As of Friday evening, Texas at LSU, Utah at Arizona and Oregon State at Boise State were all still on Saturday’s schedule. The FAA had not given a timeline for restarting flights, but U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy urged teams to contact the agency and schedule their departures so the games can go on.

“We’re going to allow for general aviation [and] those larger movements to take place as a priority. Smaller movements will take a lower priority,” Duffy said. “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.”

The games are still on for now, but with teams racing to schedule flights, college football’s Saturday may come down to the wire.