Ohio State’s season opener game against Oregon State has was delayed for nearly 70 minutes due to inclement weather in Columbus. At halftime, OSU went to the locker room with a 42-14 lead when the delay was announced:
Oregon State-Ohio State weather delay: Buckeyes season opener suspended for 70 minutes due to inclement weather
The delay lasted a little over an hour.
Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports
There was heavy rain in the area:
Throughout a college football game, there are multiple people on-staff who are monitoring weather conditions in the area:
Former Florida associate AD Chip Howard was involved with the Gators’ lengthy Idaho game delay in 2014, due to lightning in the Gainesville area.
“The lightning when it’s 15 miles [away], we let the coaches know and the referee,” Howard said. “And then when it hits at eight miles, you’re starting to doubt. That’s the easy part of it. The hard part is trying to figure out and forecast, because you’ve got television, you’ve got two coaches that are intense and highly competitive, and you’ve got the fans to worry about, first and foremost. We have pretty precise protocols that we institute as soon as that happens. So, all that stuff just kind of happens by plan, what doesn’t happen is ‘OK how long is it going to be?’ Immediately when you have a lightning strike, it’s 30 minutes before you can resume play,” per NCAA rules.
Most teams have a centralized way to monitor weather. Sometimes campuses have their own, and sometimes they use common services like AccuWeather. Florida has a volunteer lightning researcher who sits in with operations staff during games. Marshall uses third-party software specifically to track lightning.
After the initial delay, play resumed around 3:10 p.m. ET. Two years ago, Ohio State’s season opener against Oklahoma was delayed due to lightning in Norman.
We will continue to update this story as needed. For more on Ohio State football, head on over to Land-Grant Holy Land.
See More:
