Major sporting events slowly returned to normal Saturday after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights nationwide for several hours a day earlier, disrupting travel plans for professional and college teams across the country.
Most college football teams playing Saturday travel the day before kickoff, and a number of games were delayed by hours to give visiting programs more time to arrive and prepare. No. 2 Utah’s game at No. 22 Arizona was pushed back three hours, as was Arizona State’s game at Central Florida. Other teams, like Auburn, opted for charter buses. One way or another, most teams found a solution.
There was, of course, one major exception: the No. 19 Mississippi game at Oklahoma will now compete with the NFL with a kickoff scheduled for 1 p.m. EST on Sunday.
JuJu Watkins and her third-ranked Southern California teammates had just boarded their flight to face top-ranked South Carolina when the ground stop was issued. The Trojans women's basketball team stayed in Los Angeles for the night after being deplaned, and their departure for Greenville was pushed to Saturday afternoon.
Fairleigh Dickinson women's basketball coach Stephanie Gaitley found out late Friday night that her team's flight to Ohio State had been canceled. There was discussion about leaving immediately by bus and making a stop halfway, but Gaitley preferred to let her team get a better night’s sleep before setting out on a 10-hour bus ride on Saturday morning.
In women's soccer, the Utah Royals already were in the Washington, D.C., area ahead of their National Women’s Soccer League semifinal against the Washington Spirit on Saturday. The Kansas City Current were supposed to depart Friday for their semifinal against Gotham FC on Sunday in New York.
The Current told ESPN they were “collaborating with key stakeholders, including the NWSL and our charter partner, to identify next steps in order to arrive safely ahead of our match against Gotham FC on Sunday.”
There were 14 scheduled NHL games on Saturday, and the majority made it to their destinations before the flight stoppage began. The San Jose Sharks, who were left waiting to see whether they would be able to travel, arrived late Friday in Utah.
In the NBA, most teams were, at worst, mildly affected by Friday’s events. Cleveland was the outlier.
The Cavaliers started their Saturday much earlier than usual, leaving Miami at 8:54 a.m. on a plane taking them to Cleveland — where they were set to play the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday night.
The Cavs couldn’t get out of Miami on Friday night as planned after a game against the Heat that capped a three-game road trip, then scrambled to re-book some hotel rooms. NBA teams typically don’t fly on the morning of a game, but there have been exceptions made for unusual situations.
Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell said he would have preferred Saturday’s game to get rescheduled, but noted the team will “make adjustments, figure it out and go from there.”
“Back-to-back, three-hour flight, it was already a tough one,” Mitchell said. “But hey, they say we’ve got to play, we’ve got to play.”
Rescheduling the game against the Mavericks wasn’t an ideal option. Cleveland has a busy arena with a minor league hockey team, college games and other events scheduled; Saturday’s game falls in a stretch where the arena is playing host to events on 11 consecutive days.
“It’s part of it," Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson said. "You just adapt.”
The NFL benefitted from its Sunday slate, as teams typically travel the day before their games. Friday’s flight stoppage ultimately had the biggest impact on official Don Willard, who will work as a referee in two games on the same day. Willard will call the Dolphins-Colts game at 1 p.m. EST before heading 112 miles east for a Steelers-Bengals Sunday Night Football contest.
The NBA had a similar debacle.
At least one NBA referee was unable to get to where he was scheduled to work on Saturday, prompting the league to make changes to the crews assigned to two games.
Brian Forte was added to the crew for the Chicago-Minnesota game, replacing Jason Goldenberg. And Jenna Schroeder was added to the crew for the Dallas-Cleveland game, replacing Forte.
AP Sports Writers Tim Reynolds and Doug Feinberg contributed to this report.
See AP’s full sports coverage here
Aircraft are seen at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International airport, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Just hours after a tanker in New Orleans lost its steering and slammed into a docked river cruise boat, the city’s port sued to make sure federal investigators can seize the vessel that is owned by a subsidiary of a Chinese company.
All 197 passengers and crew on the American Heritage cruise ship survived Friday as well as the crew on the tanker.
Officials said 32 people were brought to the hospital, including two police officers thrown into the Mississippi River when the boat rolled. But none of the injuries were critical and eight remained hospitalized Saturday.
The lawsuit, filed by the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans, said the Atlantic Asphalt tanker caused at least $1 million in damage to its terminal. A judge issued a warrant Friday giving federal officials control of the ship for now.
The tanker has been towed away from the site, but it could take weeks to move the cruise ship, which remains turned on its side against a terminal in the Mississippi River, Coast Guard Capt. Melanie Burnham told reporters Saturday.
The first step is to make sure the 16,000 gallons (60,500 liters) of fuel on the boat are removed safely, she said.
Traffic has been limited on the Mississippi River, but Burnham said boats should be able to move both upstream and downstream soon.
The tanker appeared to lose steering, but the exact cause of the crash is not known, Burnham said. The National Transportation Safety Board was sending investigators to New Orleans.
The first warning people on board the American Heritage had was the tanker blasting its horn several times as it floated toward the cruise ship, passenger Joe Knab told WDSU-TV.
The hit was hard, and the ship immediately started leaning. The crew gathered everyone on the third deck to put on life vests and start getting them off the boat, but it suddenly rolled and sent Knab and about 100 other passengers and crew into the muddy Mississippi River, where the water was 66-degree Fahrenheit (19 degrees Celsius).
Tugboat operators, other cruise ship captains, nearby workers, police and other rescuers rushed to help.
“It’s fine now, but it was a little scary there at the time. I thought I was drowning because I kept bobbing underneath — and the water doesn’t taste very good,” Knab told the television station, still in the jeans he was wearing on the boat, now covered in mud.
Knab said he thinks he was in the water about 15 minutes. He laughed and said his 20 years in the Navy likely helped him.
“They taught us not to drown,” Knab said.
Knab was wearing a shirt from a Hilton hotel where the passengers gathered. The rest of his belongings were in the river. Somehow his cellphone still worked. He hoped to get on a plane soon back to Wichita, Kansas, but he was not sure how Friday’s nationwide ground stop was going to throw another problem at him.
Putting the life vests on the passengers as they waited to get off the boat likely saved a number of lives when the boat suddenly turned into the water, New Orleans Harbor Police Chief Melanie Montroll said.
“Whether it’s 10 feet of water or 200 feet, having those vests, having that population put those vests on and kind of float upriver while we retrieve them — I think was the best factor of success,” Montroll said.
The American Heritage was finishing an eight-day cruise to several Mississippi River destinations.
The Atlantic Asphalt is a 520-foot-long (160-meter-long) vessel. It had a final destination in New Orleans, according to MarineTraffic, and was sailing under a flag for the Marshall Islands.
The ship is owned by a company called Nave Shipping SA, which is registered in Monrovia, Liberia, according to the International Maritime Organization and was one of the defendants in the lawsuit filed Friday.
Nave Shipping is a subsidiary of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation, a sprawling Chinese state-owned conglomerate, according to the live shipping tracker MarineTraffic.
China State Shipbuilding Corp. didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.
The tanker involved in the crash specializes in carrying large quantities of asphalt and bitumen, a semi-solid substance that is often used for road construction and roofing, according to MarineTraffic.
The American Heritage river cruise paddleboat is seen on its side after being struck by the Atlantic Asphalt tanker ship in the Mississippi River, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Emergency personnel and crews work the scene after a tanker crashed into a river cruise in New Orleans, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)
This image taken from video provided by Devon Flanagan shows people being helped out of the water after a tanker crashed into a river cruise in New Orleans, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. (Devon Flanagan via AP)
The American Heritage river cruise paddleboat is seen on its side after being struck by the Atlantic Asphalt tanker ship, top center, in the Mississippi River, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
