A former longtime SEC official does not believe that Texas fans throwing litter onto the field swayed officials to change a critical pass-interference call in Georgia’s win over the Longhorns on Saturday in Austin, Texas.
“The water bottles being thrown on the field had nothing to do with changing the call,” Gus Morris, a Cumming resident who officiated SEC games for 31 years, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a phone interview Monday night.
But Morris, whose decorated SEC officiating career spanned 1990-2020, did present an alternative possible explanation, one that some fans might find confirming – that the crew may have waved off the penalty flag in favor of the Longhorns after watching the play in question on the video board at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.
One reason that Morris believes that such an explanation is possible is because he himself officiated games when his crew made surreptitious use of a replay shown on a stadium video board.
“It’s happened,” Morris said. “I’m telling you it’s happened.”
Reversing a pass-interference call based on a review of the play on a stadium video board is problematic for at least a couple of reasons. One is that it does not follow the protocol for replay review. Another is that pass interference is not a penalty that can be reviewed.
But Morris, who grew up in Sandy Springs and graduated from Marist, was sympathetic toward the officiating crew if it did make use of the video board.
“In my whole career, I could say that I saw it happen two times,” Morris said. “First of all, they want to get it right. And if that’s what it takes – somebody will back up and, just, without looking obvious that they’re looking at it, can glance up, and if there’s some useful information up there, you really kind of need to take advantage of it or utilize it if you can.”
In a statement issued after the game, the SEC’s explanation of the call was that “the game officials gathered to discuss the play, which is permitted to ensure that the proper penalty is enforced, at which time the calling official reported that he erred, and a foul should not have been called for defensive pass interference. Consequently, Texas was awarded the ball at the Georgia 9 yard line.”
It’s conceivable that this explanation is legitimate. However, in the ABC broadcast, field judge Antonio Smith (who threw the flag) was seen conferring with referee Matt Loeffler moments before Loeffler announced the penalty on cornerback Jahdae Barron. In fact, after that quick meeting, Smith appeared to walk away as Loeffler prepared to make the announcement before he and Loeffler briefly conferred one more time.
If Smith had realized that he had made a mistake, one would think he would have voiced it then, before the penalty was announced, when he had ample opportunity to do so. But he evidently did not do so. Nor did Smith seek a pause in the roughly half-minute after the penalty announcement but before fans began tossing water bottles and other trash onto the field, when the play clock and game clock had started and Georgia and Texas were lined up for the next snap.
It was only after the delay caused by the littering and officials conferred again that Loeffler announced the penalty was being waved off, awarding the ball to the Longhorns with Barron’s interception. About four minutes elapsed between the original and second call. Despite the change, Georgia prevailed 30-15.
Morris acknowledged the SEC’s explanation is at least a possibility.
“I don’t think that’s what happened,” Morris said. “But it could have. It may have.”
Morris’ third scenario was more alarming, that the officiating crew received word from replay officials that the pass-interference call was errant. That was a theory also advanced by Fox Sports rules analyst Dean Blandino in a comment to The Athletic. Blandino said that a penalty “has never been picked up before” after such a long delay.
“It does seem like replay got involved either from the stadium or the SEC command center,” Blandino said. “Purely speculation, but it is hard not to come to that conclusion.”
Morris said that he never had that experience as an official, though he said he has suspected it happening elsewhere.
“There may have been some feedback from replay,” he said. “Could have been.”
Ultimately, the possibility that officials saw the replay and wanted to make the call right seems the most plausible. Texas game-operations staff showed replays of the play in question repeatedly during the break on the stadium’s massive video board. It would have been hard to miss, and presumably tempting for officials to look at.
“If that were the case that happened, somebody saw something, it’s going to be, ‘Hey, look, we’ve got to wave that flag off,’” Morris said.
As a former official, Morris sided with the crew’s desire to make the right call, even if the process to reach it deviated from proper procedure. While an exemplary official, he experienced the agony of missing calls and could understand the crew’s desire to correct an error when given the chance, however convoluted the situation. The officials are people who sometimes make mistakes and do so in a highly visible and emotional setting. They had his sympathies.
“They got it right, but this one will live with them for probably the rest of their career,” said Morris, who had little trouble recalling the details of a call he missed in a Tennessee-Vanderbilt game played more than a decade ago.
Perhaps Georgia fans might feel more aligned with Morris if the situation had been reversed in favor of the Bulldogs.
Morris spoke with the perspective of someone with a massive amount of experience and a commitment to the craft. In his 31 seasons with the SEC, he said he earned about 27 postseason assignments, including five SEC Championship games. Even after calling his last game for the SEC, he has continued to call high-school games in Georgia to help a new generation of officials learn the job. He wrote a book about his experiences, “Saturdays in the South.”
“It’s not for everybody, but it can be a lot of fun,” Morris said of officiating.
On Tuesday, an SEC spokesman wrote in an email to the AJC that the league typically does not announce reprimands of officials. Morris, who actually worked with several members of the crew that worked the Texas-Georgia game, had his own assessment.
“They got (the call) right, but it was a train wreck getting there,” he said.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
