The SEC admitted its referees made an error during Saturday night’s Penn State-Auburn football game, which cost the Nittany Lions a down during the second quarter.
With 11:45 remaining in the second quarter, Penn State threw an incomplete pass that was flagged as an intentional grounding. When enforcing the penalty the referees “erroneously set the down to 3rd; the correct down should have been 2nd,” according to a statement from the SEC after the game.
“The error was discovered during the media timeout that followed the punt and by rule it could not be corrected at that time,” the statement said.
After the game, Penn State head coach James Franklin said he tried to get the referees to change the call on the field.
“They all agreed on the call, and so did the replay [official],” Franklin said. “They all agreed. I kept bringing them over and saying, ‘It’s not accurate.’ I don’t know what else I can tell them, but they all concurred, all the officials, they got on the headset, they talked to each other, and they all agreed. They ran it by replay, and they all agreed as well. I don’t know what else I can do or say.”
Penn State was leading Auburn 10-7 at the time of the error and would win 28-20 to move to 3-0 on the season.
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