Official: OU recovered kick vs. Oregon Rules prevented official from correcting on-field refs

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- The replay official for the Oklahoma-Oregon football game says he knew that Oklahoma recovered a pivotal onside kickoff late in the game.

But Gordon Riese told The Oklahoman that replay rules prevented him from correcting on-field officials who made the wrong call and awarded possession to Oregon, even though it was clear to Riese that Oklahoma's Allen Patrick had recovered the ball.

Riese also said that if he had seen the correct angle of the replay, it would have been easy to reverse the call and give possession to Oklahoma, which could have run out the clock. But that didn't happen, he said, and Oregon took advantage of the officiating blunder, scoring a last-minute touchdown to win 34-33.

Been going on since there was officiating...and will continue until there is no officiating.

People are not perfect and will make mistakes. My guess is an absolute analysis of every play will generally show the mistakes even out between the teams...some coming at more critical times than others.

You do not fire officials over it...you play on and make the most of something that impacts every team on the field.

We got a bad call on pass interference on that series after that -- refs might as well of walked the ball across the goal line. In the last series, they had several replays which helped Oregon players who were tired.

Not to mention one of their players went on ESPN the next morning and said he recovered the on-side kick which was an outright lie and ESPN played the reply right after showing a Sooner got the football and the Oregon player never had the ball. Pretty bad when you send a player out to lie. Do I think Belotti did that -- you betcha.

Worst part is that the PAC-10 officiating crew was supposed to get a one-game suspension but they gave it to them in the off-week so they wouldn't lose any money. But then the head ref was also a friend of the Oregon coach from high school.

Same crew did the same thing to Arizona and Mike Stoops in the game the next week -- horrible officiating and since the PAC-10 chose not to suspend the crew except during their off week, the PAC-10 apology isn't worth a thing.

Pete Carroll doesn't think much more of Oregon's coach along with their officiating then we did. Washington fans when they played here wished us good luck in Oregon because they said we would need it because officiating and replay booth were so biased in favor of the Nike Ducks. Boy, were they right.

I think this is major CYA on the replay official's part. He somehow *knew* the truth but wasn't *allowed* to change the call? Garbage.

But I recall that Oklahoma still had a chance to win the game and didn't convert. Plus, they had the game well in hand and let it slip away even if Oregon got some help form the refs.

I'm willing to credit Oregon with the "loss" more than I'm willing to credit Oklahoma with the "win".

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