Sun Belt reprimands Georgia State-ULL officials for skipping a down
The Sun Belt issued an official reprimand to the officiating crew in the Georgia State-Louisiana Lafayette game for a second quarter mistake.
Georgia State had the ball with less than a minute to go in the second quarter of Saturday’s game, a 34-31 win by ULL. During what the league termed was a “series of penalties,” the Panthers were assessed a false start penalty and because the team had timeouts, it could either take a timeout following the penalty or be assessed a 10-second runoff on the clock because the penalty occurred while the clock was running. The Panthers chose to take the timeout.
The penalty happened with 44 seconds to go on first down and the yards for the penalty were marked off. However, after the timeout, the down marker was changed to second down and first down was wrongfully skipped.
“The Sun Belt is committed to ensuring that our game officials, like our coaches and student-athletes, are held to a high standard,” Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson said in a statement. “When that standard is not met, we must acknowledge an error occurred.”
Georgia State still scored on the drive after Will Lutz kicked a 48-yard field goal as time expired on what should have been third down but was actually fourth down. However, Georgia State wouldn’t have had time to run another play. After a completed pass on what should have been second down, the Panthers took a timeout with two seconds left to bring Lutz on the field.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
