no, it was not before the whistle. i played it back several times. all the other players stopped, yes, but it was definately not before the whistle. i dont know the rulebook inside and out, but i think thats legal.
Twice later in the game I saw georgia players guilty of hitting late and no flag. It's just the breaks of the game. Sometimes they call it and sometimes not. The holding, from my view point, TV, was real iffy. I've seen flagrant holding , jersey pulled off the guy from behind and no call. The ref was just itchy I guess.
this is the first ive come to TF since the game, so forgive me if these plays were brought up before. landry's late hit was questionable. he was already committed to the hit before the back was ob, but not a horrible call. missed hester's TD reach. might not have been a TD but not even a replay. on same play, they missed a facemask on hester. right in front of the line judge. hold on jean-gilles. again, only noticed this on a replay. i think the commentators were actually talking about what a good job he was doing. the d-lineman tried to get off the block and jean-gilles had arms fully extended with both hands full of jersey. the bowe fumble--they got that wrong. the false start on whitworth was caused by the DL first moving. they got another play similar to this right. thats just off the top of my head. i dont normally rip on this stuff because its gonna happen but this was way too much. i havent gone through the game and figure out how these effected the game, but im not foolish enough to say if these were called correctly LSU would have won. it probably would have been a game though.
If I remember correctly, shortly after the face mask penalty on LSU, Georgia running back ran around the offensive left end. As the defensive back was trying to tackle him/push him out of bounds the georgia runer had the defensive backs face mask. The face mask on Hester was very obvious to the TV camera.
It sure looked to me like he was incited by something. Couldnt tell by the replays though. Definitely out of character for him.
as I recall, please correct me if I am wrong, the runner can do that as long as he does not grasp and pull the helmet in a way to injur the opposing player. In other words he is stiff arming him and as long as he doesn't do anything to injur the player and is only trying to keep from being tackled then it is ok for him to do it.
I don't know the rule either but they call offensive linemen for hitting the face mask. If they make rules to protect the players how could allowing a players fingers inside the opponens face mask not be risky behavior. Just stick your finger in the defensive players eyes. That should make him turn loose.
