Ole Miss players were sent home Friday afternoon and were asked to return to the football facility that evening for updates. By the end of the night, the rebels had a plane, but no flight crew was allowed to fly it.
That’s why the Rebels couldn’t leave for Oklahoma until 4:20 p.m. PT Saturday, a day after a nationwide shutdown froze air travel across the country, Ole Miss said in a statement Saturday. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey’s decision to move the game from Saturday to Sunday sparked a fight between Oklahoma and the SEC, with Sooners athletic director Roger Denny proposing a “strong objection” at the conference office.
“Like the rest of the country, we faced unprecedented challenges with Friday’s ground stop,” Ole Miss said in a statement released Saturday afternoon, nearly an hour after the originally scheduled kickoff time at Oklahoma. As we resolved travel issues and uncertainty surrounding the situation in real time, the goal was still to get to Norman on Friday night and play the game on Saturday. »
OU fought to keep the game Saturday, but Sankey told the school that not playing at the designated time would result in a forfeit. Sunday’s game begins Sunday at 1 p.m. ET (noon CT) on the SEC Network. Oklahoma is offering discounted deals, including $2 hot dogs and beer, as well as free tickets to other sporting events to attract fans to the rescheduled game.
“Simply put, this decision is not fair to our athletes, our institution or to Sooner Nation,” Denny said in a statement released Saturday morning. “But we had no other choice. We are obliged to play the game when asked, but we remain firmly convinced that the wrong result was achieved tonight.”
“We were told Ole Miss explored every avenue to get to Norman and play Saturday as scheduled,” Denny said. “But unlike all the other teams who will participate in tomorrow’s competition, they failed to find a solution.”
The Federal Aviation Administration issued its nationwide ground shutdown shortly before 3 p.m. CT Friday and lifted it at 7:15 p.m. CT, more than four hours later. It was only the third complete shutdown in the country’s history.
Ole Miss prepared to depart for Tupelo on its flight to Tupelo after the ground stop, but its charter broker, Air Planning, informed the school that JetBlue could not fly the team to Oklahoma City Friday evening.
Ole Miss’ problem was purely logistical, the school said.
Ole Miss faced a 55-minute bus ride from the Oxford campus to Tupelo Regional Airport, a facility that handles little regular commercial traffic, compounding the battle against time. Flight crews are assigned limited duty hours and are believed to have exceeded their duty hours before departure, Ole Miss said.
Compounding the problem: Tupelo is not a JetBlue hub, so a backup team was not available to operate the charter, sources told CBS Sports.
“There were no other flight options at that time, and we determined it was too late to send our student-athletes on a bus trip of eight hours or more,” Ole Miss said in a statement. “Additionally, flight crew duty schedule restrictions prevented us from being able to take off until Saturday afternoon at the earliest.”
Flight crews are required to have at least 10 hours of rest between shifts.
The Tupelo Airport handled no arrivals or departures as the ground stop ended Friday evening.
Oklahoma expressed concern about the impact on its fans.
“The postponement of the game has a significant impact, particularly on our fans,” Denny said. “Those who have arranged their travel, accommodations and personal plans in anticipation of a Saturday game now face unnecessary disruption and difficulty. Their time, commitment and investment deserve greater consideration than they were given in tonight’s conference decision.”
Former Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops went even further Saturday.
“This decision by Greg Sankey is absolutely wrong,” Stoops wrote on social media. “All the Power Four teams found a way to get to their games, but Ole Miss didn’t?”
Every second FBS team rescheduled their flights or bus transportation to get to Friday or Saturday games, leading to about a half-dozen rescheduled kickoffs Saturday.
Arizona didn’t fly out until Saturday morning and didn’t land until five hours before kickoff Saturday against UCF at 5:30 p.m. ET.
Auburn left an airport and booked buses for a four-hour road trip to Starkville, Miss., and its Mississippi State game was moved to 3:15 p.m. CT on Saturday. No. 2 Utah’s game against No. 23 Arizona was pushed back to 10:30 p.m. ET on Saturday after the Utes were unable to leave Salt Lake City until 10 a.m. MT on Saturday.
The game between the Rebels and Sooners has weight. Oklahoma (5-4, 4-4 SEC) is coming off a 23-7 win over Florida in Jason Witten’s first game as interim offensive coordinator and needs one more win to reach bowl eligibility. Ole Miss (6-3) fell to 19th in the College Football Playoff rankings after a 42-7 home loss to the current No. 1 seed. 1 Georgia, but is technically still alive in the PSC race.
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