Rece Davis calls out the officials for overturned call in Georgia-Texas game

The marquee matchup between Georgia and Texas was marred by a moment in the second half when officials made a controversial pass interference call. They later picked the flag up but ESPN College GameDay host Rece Davis still feels they mishandled the situation and called out the officials over the overturned call.

On the play, officials threw a pass interference flag on Texas. That play ended with an interception returned inside the 10-yard line. However, it was widely regarded as the wrong initial call and fans began throwing debris on the field. That gave officials time to discuss the play and overrule their initial call.

“That was, in my judgment, an egregious look and error,” Rece Davis said on the College GameDay Podcast. “Not in the call. They missed the call to begin with. That was not pass interference and people will say, ‘Well, it all came out right.’ Well, you know what? No, it didn’t.”

For Davis, his primary issue isn’t the call that was made on the field. Instead, it was the process that officials took to change the call, waiting an extended period of time and seeing video of the play before the change was made, despite pass interference being a judgment call and not reviewable.

“What happened is now you brought into the equation this notion, like Kirby Smart said, not only because the bottles were thrown on the field but because whether they did or didn’t, on a non-reviewable play, they played the interception on the video board and that’s when the fans went crazy because it was an awful missed call. Well, those happen. Officials make awful missed calls, but they made the announcement, they spotted the ball, they got ready to play, and the bottles came. Then, they changed their mind. You can’t do that,” Davis said.

“You can’t do that, even if they can say there’s a technicality and a loophole in the rule book because it hasn’t started back and there’s further discussion because of the delay on the field. That’s all well and good. I’m talking from a practical standpoint, you cannot do that for the integrity of the game because you brought all of this into question now. Wait a minute. Everybody can live with the mistake. They’ll be made about it forever but you can live with the mistake. What you can’t live with is the mistake, it’s enforced, and then you looked up and go, ‘Oh, geez. I saw something on the video board.’ It’s not reviewable. If you made a mistake, you made a mistake.”

Rece Davis went on to compare overturning the pass interference call to the end of the Miami–Virginia Tech game. There, a touchdown was ruled on the final play on a pass that went into a pile of bodies. Upon review, it was overturned, and while most people felt that the ball was probably an incomplete pass, it was also hard to say there was video evidence to prove that.

“It almost feels this was far more egregious because of the bottles being thrown on the field, but it feels a lot like the Miami-Virginia Tech play at the end, but to a much more severe degree, in that, they got the call right, sort of in the end, or closer to right than they would have otherwise, but the steps they went through were really a black eye and just can’t happen.”

Because of these issues, Rece Davis feels like there needs to be more accountability for officials, including potentially making them meet with media after games.

“I thought there needed to be a stronger statement from the conference and there needs to be a stronger statement from the officials about this because you don’t need to do this,” Davis said. “This is another reason why the head official should have to go in and answer questions for, even if it’s a finite period of time. Even if they say, I’ll make up a number, we’re going to take seven minutes and the clock starts to ask questions about the calls that were made on the field. Step in there and be accountable for that because that was a terrible look for a game on that stage.”

In the wake of the incident in the Texas-Georgia game, it will be interesting to see if the SEC approaches similar situations in the future differently. Texas was also fined $250,000 for fans throwing objects on the field by the SEC.