“It definitely hit the defender, and I’m going to be asking the officials what the ruling is on that,” Richt said. “I don’t know if they saw it while it happened or not. But as it deflected off the defender there was nobody in the area where the ball landed, I know that. But if the ball didn’t get hit by the defender it would have landed a lot closer to one of our eligible receivers. So I don’t know if we would have gotten called for that or not. It’s a good question.”
Of course, if Georgia had just handed the ball to superstar tailback Todd Gurley on first down from the 4, the play wouldn’t be an issue. Richt said twice in his postgame news conference that he wished they had done that.
Nothing will come of the former. (And as Emerson
points out, the OBC has reasons to complain about Saturday night's officiating too.) So the question is if anything will come of the latter.