ESPN’s Louis Riddick says Miami should have been called for pass interference on final play
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Miami and Ole Miss gave us a thrilling contest to kick off the College Football Playoff semifinals on Thursday night.
The Hurricanes, via a late touchdown run from quarterback Carson Beck, advanced to the CFP National Championship game for the first time ever after the Rebels’ last-gasp pass fell incomplete. However, if it were up to ESPN’s Louis Riddick, we’d have seen 1 more play in the game.
Riddick, speaking on ESPN’s Get Up on Friday morning, said Miami should have been flagged for pass interference on its game-sealing stop. He believes the officiating instinct to avoid penalties in such situations prevented the referees from making a call that they would have gotten correct at any other point in the contest.
“That has to be called pass interference, cause that’s exactly what it is,” Riddick, a former defensive back, told the panel. “Look, the [DB] never really tries to make a play on the ball. He has his hand on the jersey… he just basically pulls him to the ground. In the normal course of a game, this is going to be called 100 out of 100 times… this is basically 1-on-1, DB vs. WR, and the wide receiver is getting mugged.”
Fellow ESPN analyst Jordan Rogers concurred with Riddick. He asked why we allow “more physicality” on these end-of-game plays than we do on any other snap throughout a game.
Unfortunately, their sentiment cannot overturn anything for Ole Miss’s fanbase, whose dream season has now concluded. Miami will face the winner of the Oregon-Indiana Peach Bowl matchup in the CFP National Championship game on Jan. 19.
