Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.
Quick announcement before we get started here. We’ve been spending a lot of time on improving the data we have in the Extra Points Library, adding hundreds of new financial reports, contracts, vendor deals and more.
And now more and more schools are starting to take notice. We’re thrilled to announce that Tulane has now joined the Extra Points Library community:
Tulane athletics will now be able to use our data to help make better decisions across the entire athletic department.
We’ll have another announcements very soon, as we have quite a few “silent commits”, so to speak. But if you’d like to learn about how Extra Points Library can help your athletic department, business school or other organization, at an affordable rate, drop me a line at [email protected].
You can also browse the documents we have right here.
On Wednesday morning, I rolled out of bed and checked my phone, only to see a highly unusual push notification.
The FAA had announced that the airspace around El Paso, Texas, would be closed for the next 10 days due to "special security reasons.” That would’ve meant no commercial or charter flights in or out of a major U.S. city with more than 500,000 residents. By lunchtime, the FAA had rescinded that order, but I didn’t know that at 6:30 a.m. CT … and neither did anybody in El Paso.
My first thought, of course, was, “What the hell?” The FAA doesn’t typically shut down airspace around major cities for extended periods of time with zero advance notice. My second thought, once caffeine hit my bloodstream — and because I do this sort of thing for a living — was, “Oh no, what happens to UTEP?”
The University of Texas El-Paso is, of course, located in El Paso. Its men’s basketball team was scheduled to play at Jacksonville State on Wednesday night and would presumably need a way to fly back to Texas afterward. The men’s golf team was in Hawaii, ready to compete on Thursday. The women’s basketball team is scheduled to play at Liberty on Saturday, and perhaps most importantly, the school is scheduled to host a huge softball tournament over the weekend, which will include the powerhouse Oklahoma Sooners.
What would happen to all of those athletes and events if nobody could fly into El Paso?
Somehow, I suspected this wasn’t one of those scenarios they cover at NACDA. So I called UTEP and sent a few text messages to folks in the athletic travel industry to try and figure it out.
First, let’s talk about how UTEP athletic travel typically works.
Many college sports fans may be surprised to learn that most college sports travel, even at larger programs, is done via commercial air, not charter flights. UTEP athletic director Jim Senter told me on Wednesday that the school’s basketball programs were flying commercially this week, as do the bulk of its other teams.
El Paso is a big city and home to a large airport, so commercial air travel normally isn’t a problem. But if El Paso International Airport were suddenly incapacitated, things would get complicated in a hurry.
The closest American airport to UTEP is the Las Cruces (New Mexico) airport, about 53 miles from campus. But Senter told me that airport is tiny and mostly processes charter aircraft, rather than commercial passenger flights. It wouldn’t have been able to accommodate UTEP athletes stranded in Alabama or Hawaii. The closest larger airports are in Albuquerque (260 miles from campus) and Midland, Texas (roughly 300 miles away). Both would mean long bus trips back home.
But it isn’t as easy as hopping onto Expedia and changing flights. “A travel party for college basketball may have close to 30 people in it,” Senter told me, when you add all the players, coaches, trainers and other university personnel. Parties of that size can’t always be rerouted at the drop of a hat.
So on Wednesday UTEP had early conversations with its travel partners (Anthony Travel) and other school personnel to figure out if the department would need to split the teams up across multiple flights, if they could secure enough buses from the regional airports in the Southwest … or if they might need to bus athletes to other airports and then fly them back to Texas.
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A complicating factor: getting accurate information
As I was on the phone Wednesday morning, I kept an eye on social media. Several of my followers shared an official-looking press release, claiming that in addition to shutting down air travel, the military would also be closing major highways in and around El Paso for a 10-day period.
Senter saw that same message, which had not been sent by any U.S. federal agency. “If somebody made that up thinking it would be funny … it wasn’t funny,” he told me. If car travel had actually been restricted in and around the city, the athletic department would certainly have had bigger problems than trying to figure out how to fly its men’s basketball team home.
“It sounded like an episode of Under the Dome,” Senter told me. Thankfully … it wasn’t real.
Beyond trying to combat social media rumors and potential panic from the greater El Paso community, UTEP and the greater college sports industry had to attempt to figure out how to make longer-term decisions with very limited information. On Wednesday morning, it wasn’t at all clear exactly why the airspace was closed. Conflicting reports pointed to concerns about drone activity from Mexican organized crime syndicates, as well as American drone activity potentially conflicting with commercial flight patterns and the potential of a “party balloon.”
If airline restrictions were due to concerns about military activity that could occur near El Paso, Senter wondered if it would be wise to hold athletic events in the area even if athletes could be safely bussed in from other airports. He also wondered if the announcement “could have even be the result of a hack.”
Absent clear and defined explanations from federal authorities, everybody from UTEP to Conference USA to travel agencies had to try and make split-second decisions without enough information. That created the risk of wasted money, time, and unnecessary fear.
The fear aspect was of particular note to UTEP. El Paso is one of the safest major cities in the U.S. and has been for several years. But some folks may only know the region due to its proximity to the Mexican border, so any connection to crime or instability can be frustrating to school officials (and residents).
As of Wednesday evening, it appears that everything is back to normal. But how on earth does anybody even plan for something like this?
Later Wednesday morning, the FAA announced that all airspace restrictions around El Paso had been removed, and civilian air travel could continue as scheduled. As of this writing, no CUSA events had been postponed or rescheduled, and it appears that all UTEP athletes will be able to travel to and from their events without incident.
It’s not uncommon for athletic departments to need to be able to make quick travel adjustments due to inclement weather, equipment failures or any number of unforeseen circumstances. Travel agencies, experienced operations professionals and calm coaches can help navigate those hiccups, and though annoying and sometimes expensive, those sorts of delays aren’t existential threats.
Outside of something like COVID or a 9/11-type catastrophic event, wholesale flight disruption for more than a 24-hour period hasn’t really been a thing in college sports. Lord willing, it will continue to not be a thing. But perhaps the El Paso shutdown could be the rationale for another “what to do in case of” scenario in the ol’ athletic department binder. Do you have a backup airport? Do you need one? What’s the protocol in case your athletes find themselves stranded in Alabama?
Just in case we all didn’t have enough to worry about, you know? Might not be a bad idea to try and figure out a plan. Just in case.
Play the Daily Challenge
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CLUE #1
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Notable alumni from this school include Dan Quayle |
