FAA Grounds Half of College Football and a Columnist Who Warned Everyone Is Feeling Vindicated

THE PRESS BOX — A nationwide telecommunications outage triggered a Federal Aviation Administration ground stop on Friday that lasted more than four hours, stranding at least sixteen college football teams, throwing three top-25 matchups into doubt, and vindicating, at long last, a sports columnist who has spent three decades warning that the schools were too far apart.

Baylor, Kansas State, Utah, Arizona State, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Texas, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon State, Wyoming, Colorado State, Tulane, Purdue, Auburn and North Texas all reported travel chaos. Some teams gave up and took buses. Tulane drove 350 miles. Auburn, North Texas and Purdue did the same. Arizona State deplaned, rested, and planned to try again Saturday morning. The planes could not fly because the computers that tell the planes where other planes are had stopped working, which is a sentence I have been writing about this sport in one form or another since 1995.

I want to be clear that I take no joy in this. I take a specific, measured, fully documented amount of joy in this.

For years I have stood at this very keyboard and asked a simple question: why does a conference need an airplane? When I started covering this beat, a road game meant a tank of gas and a thermos. The rivalry was down the highway. You could smell the other team’s concession stand from the parking lot, and I rated it (6 out of 10, soggy). Then the money came, the conferences swallowed half the country, and now a team in one time zone plays a team three time zones over and everyone acts surprised when a cable in a basement somewhere decides the whole operation is grounded until further notice.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart said it plainer than I ever could. “Maybe if we actually had regional conferences,” he offered, “we could just drive to the games.” Coach, I have a thirty-one-year archive that would like to shake your hand.

Officials were grounded too, though the leagues noted they can run a seven-person crew if a full crew can’t make it. I will say only this: I remember the back judge from the 1997 regional final, I remember exactly what he did, and if he is stranded at a gate tonight eating a 3-out-of-10 pretzel, I consider the ledger balanced.

The games themselves hang in the balance. Tennessee and Texas A&M, Texas and LSU, Utah and Arizona — all scheduled, all now depending on whether a bus can cover what a plane was supposed to. I have ridden a team bus. It builds character. It also builds a column, because I have nothing else to do for 350 miles but think about how right I have been.

The conferences will fix the flights. They will not fix the distance. You cannot buy your way out of a map.

Drive to the game. You’ll make it. The plane was always optional.