SEC releases statement explaining officials overturning penalty, Texas fans behavior

Georgia football just finished knocking off the top ranked team in the country Saturday night when they defeated the Texas Longhorns 30-15. While that is a major story on its own, I think you can guess what everyone is talking about after the game.

The officials decision to pick up their defensive pass interference flag while Texas fans threw debris onto the field.

This decision, and overall sequence of events, was something I had never seen before. And it was completely unfair to Kirby Smart and his team.

As a result, the SEC has released a statement regarding these events, sharing the following.

"With 3:12 to play in the third quarter of the Georgia at Texas game, Texas intercepted a pass at the Texas 46-yard line and returned it to the Texas 9 yard line," the league said in a staement. "Texas was flagged for committing defensive pass interference on the play which resulted in Georgia maintaining the ball with a first down.  

"The game officials gathered to discuss the play, which is permitted to ensure 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 Texas 9 yard line."

"While the original evaluation and assessment of the penalty was not properly executed, it is unacceptable to have debris thrown on the field at any time. The disruption of the game due to debris being thrown onto the field will be reviewed by the Conference office related to SEC sportsmanship policies and procedures."

I didn’t think the SEC would admit any wrongdoing from this sequence, but thankfully they did admit some fault in how the officials handled this. They did however use the behavior from Longhorns’ fans to cover up their mistake though. Hopefully this is a learning experience for everyone involved, because to me it isn’t fair to punish a team and change a call just because the officials had extra time to talk about it while fans threw debris on the field.

But at the end of the day, Georgia knocked off the No. 1 team in the country even after this wild moment. And that to me just makes this win that much more impressive.