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Inside The Huskies

UW-Michigan State Kickoff Delayed

The Huskies arrived late in East Lansing after flight delays kept them grounded.
Dan Raley|
UW defensive coordinator Ryan Walters huddles with his defensive players and safeties coach Taylor Mays.
UW defensive coordinator Ryan Walters huddles with his defensive players and safeties coach Taylor Mays. | Dave Sizer

With travel delays preventing the University of Washington football team from arriving at a decent hour in the Midwest, the Huskies' Saturday afternoon game with Michigan State has been moved back 75 minutes to a 2:30 p.m. PT kickoff in East Lansing.

The game, originally scheduled for 1:15 p.m., will still be shown on the Big Ten Network, with no other football games overlapping into the cable channel's later TV time slots.

A nationwide FAA ground stop kept the Huskies from leaving on their chartered flight from Boeing Field for six-plus hours, sending the players back to campus by bus to wait out the long delay.

With the rearranged schedule and air travel restored at 5:15 p.m. PT, Jedd Fisch's team wasn't expected to arrive until 2:20 a.m. at Capital Region International Airport in Lansing, Michigan.

Other schools affected by the FAA shutdown either took chartered busses to their football games or planned to fly early on Saturday to reach their destinations.

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In a season full of nonstop injuries, poor performance and costly penalties, the Huskies (5-4 overall, 2-4 Big Ten) could ill afford to have something else go wrong this fall.

With a lack of sleep or in dealing with jet lag, the UW could be at a decided disadvantage in facing last-place Michigan State (3-6, 1-5).

The Huskies will have ready-made excuses if this one doesn't go well.

Fisch's football team wasn't the only UW athletic entry affected by the flight shutdown and forced to scramble to play a weekend game with a new starting time.

The Husky basketball team (2-0) had its Saturday game at Utah (3-0) -- its first road game of the season -- rescheduled from its 4 p.m. tipoff that day to Sunday morning at 11 a.m. That game still will be telecast on ESPN+.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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