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Lincoln Riley critical of overturned TD late in Minnesota game, says replay rule was ‘ignored’

Spenser Davis

By Spenser Davis

Published:

Lincoln Riley met with reporters on Tuesday night to discuss USC’s upcoming game against Penn State.

Riley began the availability by discussing the end of USC’s Week 6 loss to Minnesota.

Riley noted several calls that he believed were missed late in the game against the Golden Gophers, but focused particularly on a touchdown scored by Minnesota with just 56 seconds to go.

Minnesota was facing 4th and goal near the goal line when PJ Fleck decided to go with a QB sneak. Quarterback Max Brosmer was initially ruled to be short of the end zone, but replay officials overturned the call on the field and award Minnesota a touchdown. That gave the Gophers a 24-17 lead, which proved to be the final score of the game.

On Tuesday, Riley was very critical of that officiating decision.

“There was a lot of talk with the conference about [the last play],” Riley said. “The explanation that we got on the last play was that they thought the runner had scored and they felt like that was enough to overturn it. I have not been given any explanation why we ignored the part of the rule that obviously states that to overturn something that it has to be absolutely, completely clear-cut. There can be no doubt about what happened. That part was ignored, which was unfortunate for us.”

Riley did clarify that he is not blaming the officials for USC’s 24-17 loss to Minnesota.

“Now, we’re moving past it. It’s not the reason that we lost the game. We had plenty of other opportunities and I’m not sitting here blaming the officials saying, ‘they did a bad job and that’s why we didn’t win the game.'”

Here’s video of Riley’s comments, courtesy of Luca Evans:

USC will try to get back on track with a win over Penn State on Saturday.

Spenser Davis

Spenser is the news manager at Saturday Road and covers college football across all Saturday Football brands.