UNLV football on track to face New Mexico after hectic travel day

After an hours-long flight delay on Friday, the UNLV football team finally was able to travel to Albuquerque and is still scheduled to play No. 23 New Mexico on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. PT, according to the team.

The Federal Aviation Administration decision to ground flights nationwide for several hours Friday did lead to a hectic travel day for the Rebels team. It did not board its charter flight scheduled for 2:30 p.m., a UNLV Athletics statement read.

The team had entered a private jet terminal at Harry Reid International Airport for its original flight time, but was placed on standby and after roughly an hour returned to the football facility on campus, reported Bea Martinez, who travels with the team as the host of FOX5’s “Reb Zone Sports Show.”

“We made our way back after we had no update,” Martinez said in the afternoon.

“We don’t know if or when we will head to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We don’t even know if there will be a game tomorrow.”

But after the ground stop was lifted, the team and Martinez posted visuals on their social media accounts of them boarding a flight.

Sources confirm: we're en route. https://t.co/rlBBSvNKse

— UNLV Football (@unlvfootball) November 14, 2026

Most college football teams playing on Saturday travel the day before their game, and the stoppage left many schools — including No. 2 Utah, eighth-ranked Texas and No. 9 Tennessee — at a standstill as they departed for road games. The Utes play at No. 22 Arizona, the Longhorns visit No. 24 LSU and the Vols are traveling to Texas A&M in three of the bigger games of the weekend.

Texas and Tennessee both returned to their campuses during the ground stoppage. Once it was lifted following more than four hours of uncertainty, the schools began making plans to fly out as soon as possible, allowing them to arrive before game day.

Auburn opted to take a bus to Mississippi State with the SEC pushing back the Saturday start time from noon EST to 4:15 p.m. to give the Tigers a little buffer. Purdue likewise decided to board buses from West Lafayette, Indiana, for its game at Iowa.

Other schools affected by the stoppage included Baylor, Washington, Kansas State, Minnesota and No. 19 Ole Miss, which said it did not plan on flying to Oklahoma for its game against the Sooners until Saturday morning.

The Big 12 said late Friday that the Kansas-West Virginia game scheduled for 5:30 p.m. EST would be moved up to 3:30 p.m. since the Jayhawks arrived in plenty of time. That allowed the league to shift the Arizona State-UCF game from 2:30 p.m. EST to 5:30 p.m., giving the Sun Devils an additional three hours after their flight from Arizona to Florida was delayed.

JuJu Watkins and her third-ranked Southern California teammates were trying to get to South Carolina for their women’s basketball game Sunday against the top-ranked Gamecocks. The team had just boarded its flight at Los Angeles International Airport when the ground stop was issued. After a while, the decision was made to deboard passengers and the team returned to the Galen Center.

The Stanford men’s basketball team traveled to Las Vegas to play in Friday night’s loss at UNLV, and before the game, a spokesperson said that if the Cardinal couldn’t fly out afterward, it could stay overnight and fly home Saturday or travel by bus had the ground stop not been lifted.

The NHL’s Nashville Predators planned to stay in Las Vegas overnight following Friday’s game against the Vegas Golden Knights before heading to San Jose for Sunday’s game against the Sharks, a Nashville spokesperson said.

The Sharks, who were left waiting in San Jose to see whether they would be able to travel, arrived later Friday in Utah.

NFL teams playing Sunday typically travel the day before their games. They were expected to fly as planned on Saturday.

— Dominic Lavoie, Danny Webster and the Associated Press contributed reporting.