Penn State football game in limbo as ground stop disrupts travel for college teams

Rare nationwide ground stop ordered at airports, including PHL | LIVE FAA Saturday, November 14, 2026 12:50AM Watch the 6abc Philadelphia 24/7 stream featuring Action News, AccuWeather and Entertainment STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- The travel plans for multiple Power 4 conference football teams have been disrupted by the Federal Aviation Administration's nationwide ground stop of all flights Friday because of communications problems at regional air traffic control centers.

The Details

Penn State is expected to face the University of Minnesota at home Saturday at 7 p.m.

"Penn State is in communication with the Big Ten Conference and the University of Minnesota. We will continue to closely monitor the situation and will share updates when available," the university said in a statement.

Four Big 12 teams (Baylor, Kansas State, Utah and Arizona State), three teams from the SEC (Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas) and two from the Big Ten (Minnesota and Washington) were still waiting to leave Friday for the sites of this weekend's games.

Arizona State has deplaned, will head home to rest and is planning to fly to Orlando, Florida, on Saturday morning to play UCF in a game scheduled for 3:30 p.m. ET, sources told ESPN.

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Rare nationwide ground stop ordered at airports, including Philadelphia International Airport: FAA How Philadelphia is being impacted by nationwide ground stop The ACC told ESPN that all of its visiting teams had reached destinations of Saturday's games before the FAA issued the ground stop of all flights.

ESPN has also confirmed that Oregon State, which is scheduled to play at No. 24 Boise State on Saturday (6 p.m. ET), still hasn't left for Idaho. Other teams from the Group of 6 conferences that are grounded include Wyoming (at UTEP) and Colorado State, whose players were shown holding a walk-through at Northern Colorado Regional Airport as they waited to depart to play Washington State.

The travel delays might affect several of Saturday's top games, including No. 8 Tennessee at Texas A &M (3 p.m. ET), No. 6 Texas at No. 21 LSU (7:30 p.m. ET), and No. 2 Utah at No. 23 Arizona (7:30 p.m. ET).

Rare nationwide ground stop ordered at airports, including Philadelphia International Airport: FAA Emergency crews responding to vessel collision near Port of New Orleans on Mississippi River Purdue was scheduled to fly to Iowa City to play the No. 15 Hawkeyes, but they instead opted to take buses after their flight was delayed, sources told ESPN.

Auburn is taking buses to Mississippi State after its flight to Starkville, Mississippi, was delayed. North Texas is doing the same for its game against UTSA in San Antonio.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart told "The Paul Finebaum Show" that his team had assistant coaches on the road recruiting Friday, and the No. 1 Bulldogs need to get them back for a home game against No. 22 Missouri (3:30 p.m. ET). The Tigers have already arrived in Athens, Georgia.

"The text thread is popping," Smart said. "We're wondering how the officials are going to get to where they got to get to go and the teams, some of them are grounded and not to their locations yet. Maybe if we actually had regional conferences, we could just drive to the games."

Another issue to track here will be officials. They tend to fly in the day before, and there could be a scramble for officials or crews compromised by travel.

A Big Ten spokesman told ESPN that all of the league's officials for the eight games on Saturday are already on site. Another source told ESPN that some officials scheduled to work ACC games are grounded, but the league can go with officiating crews of seven, if necessary.

The FAA issued the ground stop because of "extraordinary circumstances and for reasons of safety," according to a notice.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a telecommunications outage was affecting the regional air traffic control centers that direct planes between airports nationwide. He said FAA technicians are investigating. This is the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023 when a key FAA computer system malfunctioned. Before that the last time had been after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Homeland Security secretary said there was no indication yet of nefarious acts behind the FAA communications issue.

ESPN's Adam Rittenberg, Andrea Adelson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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