How Hurricane Helene is impacting college football Week 5 games

Hurricane Helene made landfall on the panhandle of Florida on Thursday as a Category 4 storm, according to NOAA.

With recorded wind gusts at 140 mph and storm surges as high as 15 feet, residents in the region were forced to evacuate early in the week. At least 28 deaths have been reported as a result of the strongest storm to hit the continental U.S. this year.

In the aftermath of the storm, and those still in the path of its remnants, several college football games scheduled for Friday and Saturday are being impacted.

Appalachian State had to cancel its game with Liberty on Friday due to “severe impacts” on campus in Boone, North Carolina due to the storm, according to Action Network’s Brett McMurphy. The game will not be rescheduled.

Liberty’s athletic director, Ian McCaw, told McMurphy the program will look to find a replacement opponent for later in the season. The Flames are currently undefeated and, if they were to win Conference USA, would be in College Football Playoff contention.

However, an 11-game schedule compared to 12 would hurt its chances of snagging an at-large bid from the committee.

Air travel has also been majorly altered by the storm’s effects, so some teams are having to find alternate accommodations to get to their destinations on time.

No. 15 Louisville, per McMurphy, left in charter buses on Friday to make the four-and-a-half-hour trip to South Bend, Ind. for its game with No. 16 Notre Dame on Saturday.

The Week 5 blockbuster between No. 2 Georgia and No. 4 Alabama will go on as scheduled in Tuscaloosa. The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore told ESPN’s Pat McAfee on Thursday that local conditions “will be a little breezy, but it should be good.”