The next time you hear an ESPN putz give a vapid salute to the officials and how they always try to get it right, remember this:
Fumble or no fumble? Two days after Georgia’s win against Tennessee, the Bulldogs remain unclear about the ruling on one of the game’s more controversial plays.
Tennessee running back Rajion Neal appeared to fumble in the first quarter and replay seemed to show Georgia’s Herrera grasping the ball under Neal’s legs at the Tennessee 41.
But while the officials stopped the game to review the call, their ruling was unclear, leaving most Bulldogs wondering whether their decision was that Neal was down or that the Tennessee back recovered the fumble — neither of which seemed correct after viewing the replay.
The only certainty was that Tennessee would retain possession.
“He just said [Neal] was down,” said Herrera, who had a hold on the ball and about half of Neal’s lower torso after the apparent fumble. “That’s all he said was he was down.”
How incompetent was this? Richt has to ask Steve Shaw for an after-the-fact explanation because the crew at the game was either too ignorant or too uncertain to give a clear reason for the call. Jeebus.
Get The Picture 
I’d like to think that behind the scenes we are raising hell for an explanation, but I’m afraid it may be wishful thinking.
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Seriously, we need to be in their ear on this one. What cracks me up this is the same crew Tennessee fans believe was completely on the take for Georgia if you read the Vol message boards. I don’t think they were on the take, just practicing equal opportunity incompetency.
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+1. We have been taking this sh!t long enough. The TV ref has all the time he needs to get the call right and he gets it wrong, even though literally millions of people saw on television that the ball was out and UGA player Herrera had recovered the fumble. Make a big stink about this McGarity and Richt including demanding discipline of the TV referee. The biggest problem IMHO about the refs has been a total lack of accountability for their actions. This is Shaw’s chance to show that things are going to be different now that he is the head of referees for the SEC.
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+1 how many times does this have too occur before things get fixed? UGA needs to led in this issue. Every play is reviewed and if you can’t get it right with the review then there needs to be a clear concise explanation on the field that the officiating crew can be held accountable for!
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Is there a photo of the fumble? I was at the game and couldn’t see the play close enough.
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I don’t know about a photo, but the replay made it clear that he wasn’t down. Then you had Hererra grabbing the ball with his arms while the UT guy was cradling it with his legs. I guess we might could argue about who had control of the football after the fact, but there is NO DOUBT that a fumble occurred.
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UGA player had his hand around the ball and the UT players leg sandwiched between much like reception possessions where he catches the ball behind the guy’s head and holds on with the guys helmet sandwiched between. And it is called possession. Dawgs ball!!
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It was a definite fumble and from the looks Herrera had the ball underneath Neal’s legs. I thought, dang GA gets the ball there and can score a TD this thing could get out of hand early. But alas, officials rule, Ga being GA, UT ball.
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And yet, reading through the Rocky Top Talk comment thread, Vols seem convinced the refs were in Georgia’s pocket. Because that’s happened with SEC refs since 2007 all the time.
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A lot of that went to the interference calls on UT’s Vereen who was all over our receiver’s backs after the ball was in the air. Some weren’t called, but UT fan’s booed when the two most egregious ones were called(they were actually good plays on his part because our receivers had him beat for two tds). I fault the refs for not calling the rest of them. They(the refs) seemed to have a “let’em play attitude” without knowing how far to let’em play.
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You couldn’t see anything from the upper deck, but going back to watch the ESPN broadcast was fairly amusing. The broadcast crew was adamant that the ball was fumbled and that Georgia would be given possession. Video replay seemed conclusive to me. It was just an example of chickenpoo cowaradice on the part of the officials.
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Does anybody know who the TV official was?
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Yeah I did not realize you can recover a fumble and be rewared possession when the ball is under your ass when the other guy has two hands on it. I can see not being sure while watching live but damn they reveiwed it and still got wrong.
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That’s known as a “testicular recovery”( per my Dad) and it trumps two hands every time!
You would think that after the Alabama WR caught a pass using the back of the DB’s helmet that it would have been a slam dunk and our ball. My father is 80 and he swears that we pay for being part of the law suit brought by Dooley and Oklahoma? and that the ref’s still resent the dance in the end zone against Florida. Far fetched? Probably, but I never argue with him anymore and my opinion of him has gone from smart—->>> not smart—-> Brilliant as I’ve matured. 😉
just sayin’
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He’s not the only one. I have seen both of those theroies mentioned several times before.
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I think the referees are just shitty, myself. I mean, we did pretty much get away with a pass interference in the end zone in the first half, and they could very, very easily have let the tying touchdown stand on the pass play where the UT receiver grazed the turf with his arse before bouncing up again. (After the fumble “mistake” I was fully expecting another “mistake” there too.)
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What that pass that twisted the WR around? That was not, nor could it be PI. That pass was completely overthrown.
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No, not that one, that was the second half. The one I’m referring to was where they went for the tight end over the middle and Christian Robinson slightly bumped him and he fell down; it was a third down and they kicked a field goal afterward. It may have been their first score. Replay looked like Robinson probably did make contact there.
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Seems like you made the same transition as your Dad.
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It’s crap like this that drives me to be a conspiracy theorist. How are we ALWAYS on the short end of the stick? I can’t think of a game in several years where we had a call go in our favor, but several that had decided games for us. Luckily this proved to be inconsequential.
What goes on behind the scenes that makes the officials hate us so badly?
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The officiating was all around incompetent in that game. UT fans were bitching about some calls/no calls I’d agree with them
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I thought UT got dinged on some seriously bad calls/no calls throughout the game. I guess it balanced out, but the officiating really was not up to par even on college football standards.
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The officiating was bad in a would-have-to-compotent-before-biased sort of way.
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It was atrocious. It was also just a precursor to 2nd and 57.
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*sigh*
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It was a fumble and Herrera recovered it (after forcing the fumble, I might add, bad ass play) but it apparently wasn’t conclusive enough evidence to overturn the ruling on the field. I was pissed at first but then relaxed after we didn’t get called for some later penalties (intereference being one).
Who wants to bet that this type of play will lose the FL game for us?
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The wording from the official was that the call on the field was “confirmed”. In your scenario the official would have said the call on the field “stands”.
I agree that there were bad calls for both sides.
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Exactly. When they said that it was confirmed, that is what blew everyone’s mind, because that means that indisputable evidence supported the call on the field…which absolutely wasn’t the case. One person has two hands on a ball, the other has it under his legs…and he’s awarded possession. Que?
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Si.
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The PI no-call on Robinson was a good no call. The was too high and sailed out the back of the endzone. No PI on uncatchable passes.
There may have been one more that we might’ve gotten away with, I forget. But after the 2nd and 57, I don’t think UT fans have any room to complain about the officiating.
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Oh… plus they did get to keep the ball on the stupid, horrible call that the original post was about. That should more than make up for us getting away with one PI.
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File this right under same ol’ same ol’ right? It’s bad that I’m not really even shocked or pissed anymore. I do, however, hope somebody MUCH higher up than me is pissed and tries all-out to do something about.
How many years has the SEC been the best football and absolute worst officiating in the country now? I swear I’ve watched MAC/PAC/SWAC/Mountain West Tuesday night games before and seen brilliant, thought-out calls by the officials and proclaimed aloud “THAT would NEVER happen in an SEC game”.
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It’s also what we expect playing at Neyland Stadium. I was looking last week at video of our 2003 blowout there: the Vols’ drive down to our 2 or 3 yeard line just befor the end of the first half which resulted in “Sean Jones! Sean Jones!” About 45 yards of that drive were penalty yards gifted to UT by the SEC officials (before Rogers Redding, there was Booby Gaston, complete with Technoid beany on his head). And a secondary memory of CMR’s first road win there 10 yards ago (after Greene to Haynes and Damien Gary’s punt return) were the spots that the refs were giving Tennessee whenever a 1st down was within any kind of sniffing distance. Generous spots. Donut cream-fiolled, Fulmer-sized spots. Some things in the SEC never change.
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I have the picture where they awarded the UT a TD with 4 seconds to go even after review and he was over a yard short when he stretched out after his knee was on the ground. Insane
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Wasn’t that the 05 game? I honestly can’t remember any more, but I thought replay rules weren’t in force yet in 03, and also I thought I recalled a last-play TD by UT in the 05 game.
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I’ve thought for years that Florida could coach their DBs to maul our receivers and their receivers to push off on every pass because nothing would be called. That 08 game will forever take the cake for the most blatantly one-sided officiating ever. They MEANT we were going to pay for the endzone celebration.
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Probably didn’t help that our team didn’t seem to ever come back out from half-time.
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Well, how would you feel if the refs flagged you with a bogus penalty every time your team did something good and let the other team flagrantly cheat. The play where one of the Gator receivers literally grabbed Prince Miller’s jersey and pulled him back so the FLA player could jump ahead and make the catch is one of the most overt acts of cheating I have ever seen in any sport anywhere. 80,000 people in the stands and millions of people on television saw it happen. No call, yet the replay showed a ref looking right at it. Of course the team was demoralized in the second half. You would have been, too.
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CMR joked on the call in show that this was the first call ever where a player retained possession by using his legs. He went on to say he expected an explanation today.
I think the official explanation is that the officiating crew was too chickins#t to overturn that call at that moment.
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Seems like instant replay has become worthless, even on obvious plays that should be overturned. Not just in SEC but every league it appears. It’s all a vague “inconclusive video evidence” when plays should be over ruled on the field
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Worse. The SEC refs use instant replay to reverse a correct call to influence the outcomes of games.
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Other than Auburn/Arky last year I can’t recall many of those. Which calls were you thinking of?
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They don’t do it at the end because that would be too obvious. They do it earlier in games. And no, I can’t recall a specific game off the top of my head but I remember seeing that happen in games before and thinking at the time that was what was going on. I remember seeing players not score on a close play on 3rd downs and the refs on the field mark the ball and the play be reviewed, and the the TV ref say it was a score when the video clearly showed it wasn’t. You make a good point, though. Next time I see something like that I’ll replay it and record it. Also, since the mid to latter 2000s I have had this weird sensation while watching SEC games that the refs, particularly in the second half of the season, always seem to make calls favoring the higher rated team. In 2009 it sure looked like that with Florida and Bama, didn’t it to you? I watch a lot of games of teams in other conferences and some pro games and I never feel that way about those refs–only in SEC games.
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Yes I agree on the slight of hand help with SEC officiating for the BCS sponsored team. LSU/Bama game in ’09 with the LSU int if I remember exactly
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No one even mentions the horribly missed call on the face mask yank on the kickoff return. I thought the UT coverage team had ripped Boykin’s head off. Absolutely shocked at the no call.
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On replay, it looked like the guy was trying to hit Boykin in the mouth. I thought UT was pretty chippy around the sidelines and on the ground the whole game.
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I wouldn’t have had as much of a problem if they ruled him down and upheld it because there wasn’t enough evidence to overturn it. But they apparently ruled him down and then went back and said it was a fumble and Tennessee recovered it. WTF?? In what world does that even make sense? Sooo incompetent. When the announcers are saying it “will obviously be Georgia’s ball” and are as shocked as everyone else when it’s not there’s a problem.
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Totally unrelated, but SC media outlets are reporting that Stephen Garcia has been dismissed from USC.
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Stakes are too high in SEC to leave officiating to hacks.
I wish the dicisionmakers were as concerned with professionalizing the SEC officiating crews as many fans are.
Look, refs are going to miss calls and get things wrong every once in a while, NFL refs are a million times more competent because of serious salaries, adequate training, real accountability etc.
Sometimes is seems like we have none of that in the SEC, yet these games matter so much and this is a multi-million dollar industry. Behind the times.
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** Look, refs are going to miss calls and get things wrong every once in a while, but the officiating problems we have in the SEC go far beyond human errors. NFL refs are a million times more competent because of serious salaries, adequate training, real accountability etc.
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Here you go: Neal was not down before he fumbled the ball – http://www.bulldawgillustrated.com/galleries/picture/8039
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That’s not the same play. He fumbled twice; that’s the second one.
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That crew was so atrocious I almost pined for Penn Wagers. Almost.
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How do you think the player who knocked the ball out and recovered it felt after all his endeavor?
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Straight from the NCAA Rulebook (SEC Edition): Section 4, paragraph 3, iii – EXCEPTION: “A player shall retain possession of a fumble by virtue of any portion of his body pinning the ball between himself and the ground while playing UGA even if a Georgia player possess the football. NOTE: In any other conference game, there is no need to consult this exception to the obvious rule above because IT’S A DAMN FUMBLE!!”
I found that quite interesting. Google it. Really. I don’t make this sh*t up.
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hahahaha
well played sir
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+1 LMAO funny.
All this talk reminds me of the infurating 04 TENN game where UGA played like crap the entire game and we FINALLY get a spark and return a kickoff for a TD to take the lead, I believe, and the F-ing refs call a hold on a player that… A) was on the opposite side of the field and didn’t effect the play and B) looked to be a questionable call in the first place. I recall our guy driving the player backwards with his hands inside the pads. Maybe he was holding too much jersey but it was certainly on the opposite side of the field.
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