Former NFL official Mike Pereira, who is now working at Fox Sports, has seen the controversial ending to the Arkansas-Auburn game. He shared his thoughts in a video message about the ruling.

“I think Arkansas should’ve gotten the ball and they should have won the game,” Pereira said. “But the ruling on the field was that it was an incomplete forward pass and intentional grounding because the quarterback spiked the ball after muffing it and the ball hitting the ground. What he didn’t rule was the pass being backwards, which I think it is, he just ends up throwing it backwards.”

It came down to what the original ruling was, Pereira said, but could replay overturn it?

“Yeah they could,” he said. “They could turn it into a backward pass, but there has to be a clear recovery in the immediate action after the ball hits the ground. Or you could change it, if the ball actually went out of bounds.”

Pereira said it appeared that an Arkansas player did recover the ball, but then it came out, and other Razorbacks stopped, and didn’t seem to pursue it.

“They had to stay with what was called on the field,” he said. “Which was a forward pass, and intentional grounding with a 10-second runoff.”

Pereira said Arkansas has a right to be upset, but “it’s one of those that a referee has a call to make that he probably has never seen in his lifetime, and he’s got to make it in real-time. He made that decision, and that’s the way the game ends.”