Steve Sarkisian furiously calls out officiating vs. Georgia: 'Hopefully they call them a holding on one of them too'
By halftime of the SEC Championship Game, Steve Sarkisian was fed up by the officiating and how one-sided it felt. And he let loose on the imbalance in calls during a brief halftime interview on ABC.
Throughout a first half that finished with the Longhorns leading Georgia, 6-3, Texas was penalized repeatedly, especially for holding. By halftime, Texas had eight penalties for 80 yards. Georgia had two for 19.
“Well, hopefully they call them for a holding one of these times, too,” Sarkisian said to sideline reporter Laura Rutledge before pausing and walking to the locker.
And one call that went against Texas in the first half — a roughing the passer call against the Longhorns defense — was deemed suspect by ESPN’s own rules analyst.
ESPN rules analyst Bill LeMonnier disagreed after Texas was called for roughing the passer in the first quarter of Saturday’s SEC Championship against Georgia. Longhorns linebacker Anthony Hill was putting pressure on quarterback Carson Beck, who threw the ball away as he was hit.
Beck was called for intentional grounding on the play, while Hill received a roughing the passer penalty as the two flags offset. However, it looked as if Hill was already in the air before Beck let go of the ball, and many were left questioning the call.
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“I’m not a fan of that call,” LeMonnier said. “I think he’s just in there and he’s falling down. So him getting hit in the head, that was incidental.”
Sarkisian explained how Texas bounced back from losing to Georgia earlier in the year
Ahead of what could be a landmark night for Texas, Sarkisian explained how the Longhorns were able to recover from their loss to the Bulldogs and keep the faith, giving themselves a chance at glory.
“Just that. We talked about that exact way. We’re not going to allow that to happen. We are going to get refocused. Our sole focus is on the next opponent and our sole focus is on what do we need to do to improve,” Sarkisian said, regarding how Texas was able to compartmentalize their loss to Georgia and not let one loss beat them twice in a season. “I really just leave it at that. I don’t speak negatively. I say, ‘This isn’t going to happen, this is what’s going to happen. Here is how we’re going to go about our business.’
“The good thing this year is we were able to lean on the experience from last year because a similar thing happened last year, losing to OU, especially in the fashion that that game went. Our ability to rebound last year, then go run the table in the conference to get back in the championship game, I think it gave a lot of the veteran players confidence that we could do it again, to follow the formula for success to make that happen.”