Hit or fumble? Auburn goes from celebration to agony in split-second loss to Georgia

AUBURN, Ala. – Millimeters matter. On the verge of winning three possessions over No. 10 Georgia, Auburn missed a chance for glory by the narrowest possible margin.

With 1:36 left in the first half, holding a 10-0 lead with the ball on the Georgia one-yard line, Tigers quarterback Jackson Arnold attempted to push the ball across the goal line in what appeared to be a routine brute-force touchdown.

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Only… no whistle sounded. No referee raised his arms to signal a touchdown. And then Georgia’s Kyron Jones suddenly started sprinting in the opposite direction, toward the Auburn end zone, leaving everyone in the stadium and watching on TV asking the same question:

What just happened?

Chaos, this is what happened:

Georgia seemingly released the ball from Arnold’s grip a fraction of an inch before the ball broke the plane. And Jones apparently wasn’t hit either, knocking down a teammate before sprinting toward the opposite end zone. If he had scored — and it certainly seemed like he had good reason to do so — Auburn’s lead would have been just three points.

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But the officials blew up the play, spent several minutes going through footage from every possible angle and ruled that, yes, the ball was not in Arnold’s possession when his hand crossed the goal line.

This decision, of course, did not go down well with the Jordan-Hare public, who up to that point had enjoyed his better half of football all season, and perhaps the entire tenure of head coach Hugh Freeze. It didn’t take much imagination to decide that Arnold was still in possession of the ball when he crossed the proverbial plane, and the more than 85,000 Auburn fans in attendance certainly thought they had better judgment on the play than the referees.

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Georgia eventually rallied to score 20 straight points and win the game 20-10. Auburn never got back to the goal line. The fumble – or missed call, depending on your point of view – effectively turned the tide after seriously denting Auburn’s aura in the first half. Boos covered the referees as they left the field for halftime, with Auburn officials castigating them as they went.