US sports scramble back to normal after FAA ground stop upends team travel

Major sporting events slowly returned to normal Saturday after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights nationwide for several hours a day earlier, disrupting travel plans for professional and college teams across the country.

Most college football teams playing Saturday travel the day before kickoff, and a number of games were delayed by hours to give visiting programs more time to arrive and prepare. No. 2 Utah’s game at No. 22 Arizona was pushed back three hours, as was Arizona State’s game at Central Florida. Other teams, like Auburn, opted for charter buses. One way or another, most teams found a solution.

There was, of course, one major exception: the No. 19 Mississippi game at Oklahoma will now compete with the NFL with a kickoff scheduled for 1 p.m. EST on Sunday.

The NFL benefitted from its Sunday slate, as teams typically travel the day before their games. Friday’s flight stoppage ultimately had the biggest impact on official Don Willard, who will work as a referee in two games on the same day. Willard will call the Dolphins-Colts game at 1 p.m. EST before heading 112 miles east for a Steelers-Bengals Sunday Night Football contest.

JuJu Watkins and her third-ranked Southern California teammates had just boarded their flight to face top-ranked South Carolina when the ground stop was issued. The Trojans women’s basketball team stayed in Los Angeles for the night after being deplaned, and their departure for Greenville was pushed to Saturday.

In women’s soccer, the Utah Royals already were in the Washington, D.C., area ahead of their National Women’s Soccer League semifinal against the Washington Spirit on Saturday. The Kansas City Current were supposed to depart Friday for their semifinal against Gotham FC on Sunday in New York.

The Current told ESPN they were “collaborating with key stakeholders, including the NWSL and our charter partner, to identify next steps in order to arrive safely ahead of our match against Gotham FC on Sunday.”

There were 14 scheduled NHL games on Saturday, and the majority made it to their destinations before the flight stoppage began. The San Jose Sharks, who were left waiting to see whether they would be able to travel, arrived late Friday in Utah.

In the NBA, most teams were, at worst, mildly affected by Friday’s events. Cleveland was the outlier.

The Cavaliers started their Saturday much earlier than usual, leaving Miami at 8:54 a.m. on a plane taking them to Cleveland — where they were set to play the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday night.

The Cavs couldn’t get out of Miami on Friday night as planned after a game against the Heat that capped a three-game road trip, then scrambled to re-book some hotel rooms. NBA teams typically don’t fly on the morning of a game, but there have been exceptions made for unusual situations.

Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell said he would have preferred Saturday’s game to get rescheduled, but noted the team will “make adjustments, figure it out and go from there.”

“Back-to-back, three-hour flight, it was already a tough one,” Mitchell said. “But hey, they say we’ve got to play, we’ve got to play.”

Rescheduling the game against the Mavericks wasn’t an ideal option. Cleveland has a busy arena with a minor league hockey team, college games and other events scheduled; Saturday’s game falls in a stretch where the arena is playing host to events on 11 consecutive days.

“It’s part of it,” Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson said. “You just adapt.”

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AP Sports Writer Tim Reynolds contributed to this report.

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