Urban Meyer, Mark Ingram react to controversial changed call by referees in Georgia vs. Texas game

Controversy reigned after Georgia’s win over Texas last Saturday, centered around officials changing an announced pass interference call following a Longhorn-fan-created delay with debris being hurled on the field. And it’s sparked plenty of mixed reaction, including from current FOX analysts Mark Ingram and Urban Meyer.

The former Heisman-winning running back and national champion head coach have both experienced plenty of bad calls, good and bad for them, and had mixed feelings on what happened. Both were glad the ultimate call was correct, but troubled by how the situation unfolded to get there.

“But I agree with Kirby [Smart], you can’t just endanger players by throwing whatever objects on the field,” Ingram said on “The Triple Option” podcast. “Obviously there was water bottles and trash but who knows what could be going on the field and hitting somebody and put somebody in danger. But the refs got it right.”

Meyer broadly concurred with Ingram. He shared how much it got under his skin how calls would be missed, but reiterated the point from Smart and others that a precedent of causing a delay for the officials to have more time to discuss a call is a dangerous one.

“But you can’t do that,” Meyer said of the call being changed in Texas’ favor. “You can’t do something unprecedented where people are throwing things on the field and you rally up. Because right now, if I’m at Ohio State, I make a signal to the fans ‘Dump the field.’ We’ll take the, what is it, $250,000? Yeah that’s half a suite at the stadium. Change the call. 

He continued: “So I’m torn. At the end of the day you want the right call and I heard Mark say that. But I think if you make a mistake you live with it and I do believe that they really have to penalize, and I know they do, the person that made that — coaches, they get fired, players get benched, what happens to the official? And I know there ramifications.”

Ingram, too, knows about being on the wrong side of an egregious blown call. He was on the New Orleans Saints team that lost the NFC Championship Game on an un-called pass interference by a Los Angeles Rams defender. That moment actually did result in the NFL making pass interference reviewable, a decision it quickly backtracked.

And it hammered home to Ingram the need to get these calls correct. Plus he joked, in a similar vein to Meyer, about having fans hurled things down on to the field to induce a change in the call like seems to have happening with Texas.

“I’m thinking New Orleans, we should’ve threw everything we had — beignets, Mardi Gras beads, everything on the field so they could’ve picked up the flag and got the call right and we would’ve been going to the Super Bowl,” Ingram said.

While it might not come publicly, Meyer and Ingram both intimated they expect that the official in question, and perhaps the whole crew, will face some scrutiny and consequences from the league office, beyond the weeks worth of controversy and discussion spurred on.

“Behind closed doors, though. We never hear about their repercussions,” Ingram said of what could happen to the Texas-Georgia crew. “They might get docked on their official grading, they might not be able to do an SEC conference championship, they might not be able to do a playoff.”