Nationwide ground stop potentially complicates NFL, college games

Published November 13, 2026 05:05 PM The sudden nationwide ground stop ordered by the FAA will potentially impact this weekend’s football games.It’s only the second nationwide ground stop since 9/11. It’s apparently due to a widespread outage impacting air-traffic control functions.Visiting NFL teams typically travel to the sites of their games on Saturday; if the situation lingers, some teams may not be able to get to where they need to be. More immediately, college teams that travel on Friday have a mess.As noted by Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports Bay Area, the 49ers usually travel on Friday for games that are at least two time zones away. For Sunday’s game against the Cowboys, they plan to travel on Saturday.Some teams can get to the locations of their games by car or train. The distance from Minneapolis to Green Bay is 279 miles. For Buffalo to New Jersey (for Bills-Jets), it’s also less than 300 miles. It’s roughly 290 miles fom Pittsburgh to Cincinnati, and 373 miles from L.A. to Phoenix.For the other games (particularly Chargers-Ravens on Monday night), it’s a long way to go via ground transportation.