Tulane football abandoned its flight and took buses to Houston on Friday night after a nationwide ground stop interrupted its trip to face Rice. The Green Wave left its on-campus facility around 7:30 p.m. and headed into a roughly 5.5-hour drive instead.
The change came after Tulane had planned to fly, but the team was on the runway waiting to take off when the ground stop went into effect. That left the Tulane Vs Rice matchup in a different kind of travel scramble than the one the team had expected when it set out for the road.
The game itself was also pushed back. What had been set for 1:00 p.m. Saturday was moved to 3:30 p.m. because of the nationwide ground stop, giving Tulane more time to get to Houston before kickoff.
Tulane was preparing for a road game against Rice in Houston, and the travel change turned a routine away trip into a long bus ride late Friday. The shift did not alter the destination, but it did change how the team would get there and how much margin it had before Saturday’s start time.
The unresolved piece is whether the buses put Tulane back on schedule in Houston after the runway delay. For now, the team’s path to Saturday is clear: leave late Friday, ride to Houston, and play Rice at 3:30 p.m. instead of the afternoon start it had first been given.
