A rare nationwide ground stop turned Friday into a travel nightmare for teams across the country.

The Federal Aviation Administration halted departing flights at airports nationwide around 2:54 p.m. Central time. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said a communications problem was hitting the regional air traffic control centers that guide planes between airports.

That timing was rough for college football. Most teams fly to road games on Friday, so plenty of them were left waiting at home airports with games set for Saturday.

Who got stuck

Four Big 12 teams were still waiting to leave Friday evening: Baylor, Kansas State, Utah and Arizona State. Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas from the SEC were grounded too. So were Minnesota and Washington from the Big Ten.

That puts some of Saturday's biggest games in question. No. 2 Utah is set to visit Arizona, Texas heads to LSU and Tennessee plays at Texas A&M.

Tennessee said it was heading back to campus until there was more progress. Minnesota said it would not be able to get to Penn State on Friday and was working on options with the Big Ten.

Arizona State got off its plane and went home to rest. The Sun Devils plan to fly to Orlando on Saturday morning to face UCF.

Buses to the rescue

Some schools did not wait around. Alabama switched to driving to Nashville for its game at Vanderbilt. Auburn bused to Mississippi State and Purdue bused to Iowa.

Tulane planned to load five buses for a 350-mile ride to Houston to face Rice.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart said coaches were busy texting about it. His team is home against Missouri, but some of his assistant coaches were out on the recruiting trail and needed to get back.

"The text thread is popping," Smart said. "Maybe if we actually had regional conferences, we could just drive to the games."

The Big 12 said it was looking at possible changes to Saturday's schedule. The SEC said it was in close contact with its schools.

The pros feel it too

The NBA's Brooklyn Nets were on a plane in New Orleans bound for Memphis when the stop hit. The NHL's San Jose Sharks were stuck at home before a game against the Utah Mammoth.

NFL teams were left waiting to see if the problem would be fixed in time for them to travel to their games this weekend.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said there was no sign yet that the outage was an attack. This is the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023.