Coaches like to preach worrying about the things a team can control and setting aside all the rest, which is a good message — right up until the moment the skies open and lightning strikes in the middle of a football game.
Or before the game begins if you’re the New Mexico Lobos. While traveling to play Auburn for a date on Saturday, New Mexico’s plan was diverted from Montgomery to Mobile. From Mobile, the Lobos used buses borrowed from the University of South Alabama. The Jaguars even sent food.
“[New Mexico] just said they needed some help, and so [South Alabama deputy athletics director Daniel McCarthy] was able to rally the troops quickly,” South Alabama athletics director Joel Erdmann told AL.com. “And it’s pretty admirable that people responded in the manner that they did. [Football chief of staff] John Clark … got them some pizzas for the road. They landed at [Mobile’s] Brookley [Field], got on four South Alabama buses and had pizzas waiting for them.”
On Saturday, the start of the Miami Hurricanes game against the visiting Ball State Cardinals was delayed more than two hours due to weather. North of Florida’s Coral Gables, in Gainesville, the Texas A&M Aggies led the Florida Gators 10-0 when the contest was paused at the end of the first quarter due to lightning.
Every program has a plan. During the offseason, operations managers crisscross the country for site visits then meticulously piece together flow charts for any conceivable contingency, including bad weather. But when the rain or lightning or remnants of a hurricane blow through, all those best-laid plans are still at the mercy of Mother Nature and, more practically, the often miserable conditions of the visitors locker room.
“You’re stuck in this crappy locker room,” said Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi, “and you don’t want to be in a crappy locker room more than you have to be.”
So, what do teams do when they’re squeezed into tight quarters for an indeterminate delay, sweaty and exhausted and hungry? Players try to sleep. Coaches attempt to refine the game plan. Operations staffers might even head to the concourse in search of a few dozen pizzas. In other words, it’s an all-hands-on-deck effort to keep 80-some players happy and comfortable in an utterly unpleasant situation. NCAA guidelines stipulate a 30-minute delay if there is a lightning delay within an eight-mile radius of a stadium; if there is another lightning strike during that time period, the clock restarts.
In 2024, we’ve seen other extended delays in Minnesota, West Virginia and Virginia during the early weeks of the season, and more interruptions are all but guaranteed.
“It does take its toll because players and coaches are used to a rhythm and a routine of a game day,” said Paul Federici, football operations director at the University of Iowa, “and this is one that is part of that disruption of rhythm that can’t be controlled. You talk through and plan for contingencies, most of which you may never use, but it’s good planning.”
There’s no perfect blueprint for handling the inevitable, but teams that have endured it at least leave with a good story to tell.
Chris LaSala remembers standing in the press box at Stillwater’s Boone Pickens Stadium in February 2016, looking out at the sprawling expanse of land that seemed to stretch endlessly outward toward an unreachable horizon.
LaSala, University of Pittsburgh’s associate athletics director for football administration, looked at his counterpart from Oklahoma State in amazement.
“It’s really flat out there,” he said.
“Oh, yeah,” the Cowboys operations manager responded. “When it storms, you can see it coming from miles away.”
Seven months later, with Pitt and Oklahoma State tied at 38 entering the fourth quarter of their Week 3 showdown, LaSala stared out toward that same horizon.
“And yeah,” he said, “you could see it coming.”
It was a wall of black, interrupted regularly by immense flashes of lightning — “dark and scary,” LaSala said.