Oklahoma athletic director Roger Denny ripped the SEC office and Ole Miss on Saturday after the Sooners' home game against the Rebels was pushed from Saturday to Sunday, a decision he called "inexplicable" and said "unfairly burdens" his program.
The SEC moved the game to 1 p.m. ET Sunday after the Federal Aviation Administration's nationwide ground stop Friday disrupted thousands of flights, including those of multiple college football teams. It was the only FBS game moved to Sunday; every other affected Power 4 team played Saturday, six at new kickoff times.
In a Saturday morning interview with SoonerScoop, Denny accused Ole Miss of making a football decision by preferring Sunday and questioned whether the school did enough to reach Norman in time to play Saturday. He said Oklahoma was "absolutely" willing to play Saturday night, an option he called "nowhere near as unfair to our fans."
Ole Miss answered with a statement insisting its goal "was always to fly to Norman Friday night and play the game Saturday." After the stop was lifted at 8:30 p.m. ET, the school said charter broker Air Planning reported JetBlue could not fly the team that night because rescreening the party and driving to the Tupelo airport would have exhausted the crew's duty time before departure. With no flights available until Saturday afternoon at the earliest, officials ruled out a bus trip of eight or more hours over 559 miles.
On Friday, players and staff had boarded buses at the Manning Center in Oxford, Mississippi, when the FAA issued the ground stop at 3:54 p.m. ET, six minutes before the buses were scheduled to leave for Tupelo Regional Airport. The players were released, then recalled for an 8 p.m. team meeting, and the stop was lifted about 30 minutes later. By then JetBlue had canceled most of its Friday night flights.
The Rebels said other SEC teams played Saturday because they had Friday charters or a bus ride of four hours or less. "We did not have those advantages," the statement said, adding the school took "every reasonable action in our power to avoid this scenario." An Ole Miss official told ESPN the Rebels were inconvenienced too, with their traveling party now in five hotels instead of one. The SEC said at 1:12 a.m. ET Saturday that a late-night departure could not be accommodated.
Denny said Oklahoma heard from state highway and police officials as early as 9 p.m. Friday that Ole Miss expected a Sunday game; learning it from the highway patrol rather than the league office, he said, was "infuriating." Commissioner Greg Sankey moved the game "over our strong objection," Denny said, and later warned that refusing the directed Sunday time would mean a forfeit. The league, he said, "could have just as easily said, 'Hey, the game is on at 8 o'clock Saturday night. Ole Miss, show up or you forfeit.'"
Denny said he believes Ole Miss preferred "a Sunday morning in the rain" and questioned whether the school would have accepted a short week were it not hosting FCS Wofford next Saturday. He also scolded the conference. "The league can't let people force that issue," he said, arguing leaders have too often let schools put individual interest above the broader good of college football.
Denny said coach Brent Venables was "furious." Oklahoma hosts Texas A&M next Saturday at noon ET, and Denny hopes league leaders "come to their senses" and move that kickoff, calling the turnaround a competitive disadvantage. He said the SEC also ignored three other Sunday home events: a women's basketball game against Southern, a volleyball match against Vanderbilt and a wrestling meet against Penn State. "It feels to me like there are a hell of a lot of circumstances that they didn't take into account in that balancing test that they do," he said.
Denny, hired in January to succeed the retiring Joe Castiglione, is in his first year as Oklahoma's vice president and director of athletics.
