Ole Miss was forced to change its travel plans to Normanlike most around the country, due to the nationwide ground stop issued by the Federal Aviation Administration.
After a couple of hours of waiting for flight approval and proper scheduling, it was determined by Southeastern Conference officials that the Rebels and Sooners would square off on Sunday at noon CT. The game was originally scheduled to occur at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on Saturday with a 3:15 p.m. CT kickoff.
Soon after the newly confirmed kickoff time, Oklahoma Vice President and Athletic Director Roger Denny issued a firm statement explaining that the situation was extremely ‘unfair’ for the Sooners and their fanbase. Denny made it clear that Oklahoma only agreed, with ‘strong objection’ because the SEC would count it as a forfeit loss for the Sooners had the game not been played on Sunday.
Ole Miss fired off its own explanation for the schedule debacle in a statement released on Saturday afternoon.
Statement from Ole Miss Athletics
“Like the rest of the nation, we faced unprecedented challenges with Friday’s ground stoppage. 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.
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. 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.”
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