Ole Miss releases statement on travel issues that led to postponement of Oklahoma game to Sunday

After Ole Miss became one of the college football teams impacted by the FAA’s nationwide ground stop issued Friday afternoon, the Rebels’ game against Oklahoma was later postponed to Sunday. The SEC made the announcement in the early morning hours on Saturday. Saturday afternoon, Ole Miss addressed the travel issues. The school said the charter company could not fly the football team Friday night and the program did not have the “advantages” other programs had to fly Friday or take a bus to their game. $39.99 gets you a FULL year of On3 | Rivals national coverage In light of the delays, Ole Miss vs. Oklahoma will now take place Sunday at 1 p.m. ET on SEC Network. The Rebels headed to Tupelo Saturday to make their way to Norman, On3’s Pete Nakos reported, ahead of the matchup. “Like the rest of the nation, we faced unprecedented challenges with Friday’s ground stoppage,” Ole Miss’ statement read. “As we worked through the travel issues and uncertainty surrounding the situation in real time, the goal was always to fly to Norman Friday night and play the game Saturday. After the stoppage was lifted at 7:30 p.m., we began preparing the team for departure before our charter broker, Air Planning, informed us that JetBlue could not fly us Friday night. At that hour, due to the time required to rescreen the party and travel to the Tupelo airport, the crew’s duty time would have expired prior to departure. “There were no other flight options at that point, and we determined it was too late to put our student-athletes on a bus trip of eight or more hours. In addition, the flight crew’s duty time restrictions prevented us from being able to fly out until Saturday afternoon at the earliest.” Ole Miss vs. Oklahoma was one of nine games postponed due to the nationwide ground stop, just the second such advisory issued by the FAA since Sept. 11, 2001. It is the only matchup that moved to Sunday, though, which led to strong criticism from Oklahoma AD Roger Denny. However, Ole Miss said other teams had charters available Friday night or other different ways to get to their respective games that the Rebels did not. The school said it took “every reasonable action in our power” to avoid moving the game to Sunday. “We understand other SEC teams were able to keep their games on Saturday, with those visiting teams having available Friday charters or ability to bus to their game in four hours,” the statement read. “We did not have those advantages. “We regret that the game had to be moved to Sunday, but we took every reasonable action in our power to avoid this scenario. The ground stoppage has been an unfortunate ordeal for all of us, and we are grateful that a solution was reached to play our game.”