Ole Miss will play Oklahoma on the gridiron tomorrow in Norman thanks to the FAA shutdown of air travel yesterday. Of course, every SEC team playing on the road (including Texas) managed to fly out after the travel ban was lifted but we are talking bout Ole Miss. Check out what Oklahoma's Athletic Director had to say.
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Matt Burnell tweeted:
While I agree that this is being handled poorly by the SEC, it is largely out of the hands of Ole Miss. The Ole Miss charter situation is a bit different than that of most other programs. Ole Miss charters via JetBlue operating out of Tupelo Regional Airport, an hour bus trip from Oxford. KTUP is a small airport with little scheduled commercial traffic, it is uncontrolled after 10pm, and is not a hub or base of operations for JetBlue. Due to the nationwide ground stop, the JetBlue crew operating the Ole Miss charter certainly would have timed out their duty day before the aircraft could depart. Since it isn't a hub or base of operations, no relief crew would have been available to operate the charter tonight and no commercial flights departed from or arrived at KTUP after the ground stop was lifted so none could be flown in. That means the earliest Ole Miss can depart would be when the rest period for the assigned crew is up, 10 hours, which only begins after the duty day ends. Depending on when that occurred, it is possible their next duty day couldn't even begin until after 8am. Add in an hour to bus/pre-flight, an hour to board, an hour and a half flight into Oklahoma City, an hour to load onto buses and half an hour to bus to Norman it would have been early afternoon before Ole Miss could get to OU. Even if kick was delayed until evening, that would be pushing it in terms of player safety and it is also unclear if the SEC even offered a late Saturday kick time as an option. Could an all-out last ditch effort made it work? Sure. But is an Ole Miss-Oklahoma game in mid-November worth making that all-out last ditch effort at the risk of player safety? I would personally say no. Unfortunately that means Oklahoma fans, through no fault of their own, get screwed. Knowing OU fans as I do, they'll find a way to make it hell on Ole Miss Sunday.
So tune in tomorrow at noon on the SEC Network if you still want to watch the game.
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