Big 12 Program to Take 4Hour 15Minute Flight on Saturday Morning For a 3:30PM Game in an Extremely Risky Move

College football teams are total creatures of habit, and almost nothing is more sacred than the Friday travel routine before a road game. Usually, players hop on a charter flight the day before, check into a quiet local hotel, grab a big team dinner, and get a solid night’s sleep close to the stadium. This weekend, however, the Arizona State Sun Devils are throwing that entire playbook straight out the window.

According to SunDevilSource.com publisher Chris Karpman on X and ESPN’s Pete Thamel, ASU is planning to take a massive, cross-country flight on Saturday morning, just hours before their 3:30 p.m. EST kickoff against UCF in Orlando.

The wild scramble wasn’t caused by a scheduling goof by the school, though.

It was sparked by a rare, nationwide aviation meltdown on Friday afternoon. Just before 4:00 p.m. EST, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a complete ground stop across the entire country after a major telecommunications outage knocked out communication lines at all 22 regional air traffic control centers.

It was the first nationwide flight freeze since January 2023 and only the second since the September 11, 2001, attacks, grounding thousands of planes in the middle of college football’s busiest travel day.

Arizona State’s football program was caught right in the eye of the storm at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. The Sun Devils had already boarded their charter plane and were preparing to depart when the nationwide ground stop brought their travel plans to a sudden halt.

Instead of taking off, players and coaches remained stranded as Phoenix Sky Harbor warned passengers that departures might not resume until at least 9:00 p.m. local time, according to Chris Karpman’s reporting.

Rather than risk landing in Florida at 3:00 in the morning, ASU pulled the plug, got everyone off the plane, and bused the team back to their Tempe campus to sleep in their own beds.

Heading home was definitely the smart call for getting some rest, especially since head coach Kenny Dillingham had already planned to keep the players on Arizona time anyway. Still, it leaves the Sun Devils with only one way to make their afternoon kickoff: flying more than 2,000 miles across the country on game day.

A direct charter flight from Phoenix to Orlando takes roughly four hours and 15 minutes, and ASU also loses two full hours on the clock because of the time zone jump heading east. Pull that off on the morning of a physical Big 12 game, and you are playing with fire.

As Chris Karpman laid out on X, the math leaves practically zero breathing room.

In a best-case scenario where ASU gets off the ground at 6:30 a.m. in Arizona, the plane wouldn’t touch down in Orlando until around 12:45 p.m. EST. Factor in a 30-minute bus ride from the airport to UCF’s Acrisure Bounce House, and the Sun Devils wouldn’t even walk through the locker room doors until about 1:15 p.m., giving them barely over two hours before the ball is kicked off.

The Long Haul

Ask anyone who has played or coached college football, and they will tell you two hours is next to nothing. Visiting teams normally show up at the stadium three-and-a-half to four hours early just to unload heavy gear trunks, tape ankles, get medical treatment, and go through proper on-field warmups. Arriving right before game time means every single step has to be rushed.

Plus, sitting in a cramped airplane cabin for over four hours on the morning of a Division I football game is a recipe for stiff legs, tight backs, and dehydration right when players need to be at their peak.

ASU isn’t the only group trying to beat the clock. Big 12 officials noted that referee crews are also stuck dealing with the same nationwide flight delays, and over a dozen other college football programs, including fellow Big 12 teams Utah, Baylor, and Kansas State, were left in travel limbo on Friday evening.

Meanwhile, programs like Auburn, Purdue, and North Texas decided not to gamble on the airlines at all, opting to hop on buses for long road trips instead. Obviously, a 30-hour bus ride from Arizona to Florida isn’t an option for the Sun Devils.

Although the FAA lifted the nationwide ground stop Friday evening, ASU’s Saturday travel plans still depend on airports clearing the massive backlog without further delays.

Friday’s shutdown left more than 4,700 flights canceled and another 10,000 delayed, according to Reuters, creating widespread disruptions that aviation analysts warned could take days to resolve. For now, ASU and the Big 12 are sticking with the 3:30 p.m. EST kickoff on ESPN2, crossing their fingers that the morning flight goes smoothly.

Still, if that charter plane gets stuck waiting on a runway for even an hour, the Big 12 could face an uncomfortable decision about delaying kickoff. What should have been a routine road trip has suddenly become a race against the clock.

The post Big 12 Program to Take 4Hour 15Minute Flight on Saturday Morning For a 3:30PM Game in an Extremely Risky Move appeared first on EssentiallySports.