A former longtime SEC official does not believe that Texas fans throwing litter onto the field swayed officials to change a critical pass-interference call in Georgia’s win over the Longhorns on Saturday in Austin, Texas.
“The water bottles being thrown on the field had nothing to do with changing the call,” Gus Morris, a Cumming resident who officiated SEC games for 31 years, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a phone interview Monday night.
But Morris, whose decorated SEC officiating career spanned 1990-2020, did present an alternative possible explanation, one that some fans might find confirming – that the crew may have waved off the penalty flag in favor of the Longhorns after watching the play in question on the video board at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.
One reason that Morris believes that such an explanation is possible is because he himself officiated games when his crew made surreptitious use of a replay shown on a stadium video board.
“It’s happened,” Morris said. “I’m telling you it’s happened.”