AUSTIN, Texas – Kirby Smart played the doubter card here Saturday night.

He didn’t want to do it. During his press conference after No. 5 Georgia beat No. 1 Texas 30-15, Smart basically said he doesn’t play to the doubters and doesn’t care about the doubters, essentially playing the doubter card.

Have you all been watching the shows on ESPN and other networks this week, he asked media members. Did you see what they said about his Bulldogs?

He didn’t watch the shows (he was in meetings, he says), but his friends and colleagues did. So many people doubted Georgia would beat Texas that Smart says he received “8,000 texts” about the doubters.

“Everyone doubted us,” he said.

But on this night, in an orange-decked Darrell K Royal Stadium, there were more than just doubters. There was the most unusual and perhaps unprecedented penalty reversal in recent college football history – here in a top-five game on national television.

Now follow me closely. In the third quarter, with Georgia leading 23–8, officials overturned a pass interference call against Texas that had nullified a Longhorns interception after conferring with each other, while the game was paused for stadium staff could pick up the trash that students were angry. at the original call – thrown onto the field.

Has this happened before? Considering the hundreds of thousands of games played over the course of multiple college divisions, somewhere, probably. In a game of this magnitude? On a stage like this? In this conference? No way.

The call was also important to the game. Instead of Georgia having possession on a first down, Texas got the interception, gained possession inside the 10-yard line and scored two plays later to close a one-time 23-0 deficit to 23-15.

The reversal left Smart in an angry, finger-wagging exchange with head referee Matt Loeffler on the sideline as Texas fans roared with excitement.

“What!?” Smart can be seen saying to the official. “Those are bulls***!” he barked at him in the last words of the conversation.

Afterwards at the press conference, Smart pursed his lips and peered at a questioner about the reversal, clearly still agitated.

“Now we’ve set a precedent: If you throw a bunch of stuff on the field and endanger athletes, you have an opportunity to overturn the call,” Smart said. “That’s a shame. That is dangerous.”

The SEC released a statement about the call after the game, noting that the game officials met to discuss the call, which is allowed, and that the referee who called the foul acknowledged that he “made a mistake,” so the call was reversed.

Would they have overturned the penalty without the five-minute break due to the stoppage of play for a clean-up? It’s a valid question. The statement did not address that question, saying only that it is “unacceptable” for fans to throw debris on the field and that the act will be reviewed.

Teams face many setbacks during a match. A momentum-swinging turnover. An opponent’s game-changing touchdown drive. A bad officiating call. But this, a reversal of a judgment decision that occurs more than five minutes after the decision was made and announced? This was a new one.

“I was confused,” quarterback Carson Beck said of the call.

“It didn’t phase us,” said Georgia’s fear of inside linebacker Jalon Walker. “We kept going. We fought.”

Oh, they did.

The answer was an 11-play, 89-yard, five-minute touchdown drive. Beck hit Arian Smith for 21 yards, then tight end Oscar Delp for 43, and then Dillon Bell for 9. One night when UGA’s receivers, according to Smart, dropped at least eight passes, they started catching them.

The defense, which has been the subject of criticism at times this year, stomped and stuffed the Longhorns the rest of the way. Under Walker’s leadership, Georgia defenders finished with seven sacks, 10 tackles for loss, three forced fumbles and an interception, and Texas went 2-for-14 on third downs and had four first-half drives of three plays or fewer .

How about this stat: Georgia became just the second team in the past two decades to collect seven sacks in a game against an AP No. 1-ranked team, according to ESPN.

Smart’s group was so dominant in the first half that Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian withdrew starting quarterback Quinn Ewers and inserted top-billed backup Arch Manning for the final two series of the first half.

What happened? Manning, applying heavy pressure, fumbled a delivery. Georgia recovered, made a field goal and led 23-0 at halftime.

Afterwards, Sarkisian made it clear that “Quinn is our starter.” Smart made it clear that his defense played one of the best games yet. It happened a few days after the coach met with players to ‘challenge’ the team’s core leadership to ‘do something’.

“Our intention was to be aggressive,” Smart said.

They were. Ewers and Manning were harassed. Texas’ offensive line, one of the most experienced in the country, failed to block the middle, at the perimeter, in any way it could.

“We knew what we wanted to do,” said Walker, who had three bags. “We knew where (Ewers) wanted to escape.”

There’s something else. “We knew the doubters,” Walker says with a smile.

In his live television interview after the game, Smart pointed the finger at ESPN.

“No one gave us a chance,” he told ESPN’s sideline reporter, Katie George. “Your own network doubted us and then tried to rob us with phone calls!”

Let’s talk more about that heist, shall we?

Georgia led 23-8 with 3:11 left in the third quarter when it happened. Texas cornerback Jahdae Barron intercepted a Beck pass and returned it to the UGA 9-yard line. The flag flew and Loeffler announced to the crowd that Barron had committed pass interference.

Angered by the call, Texas students littered the north end zone with beer and water bottles, resulting in a five-minute stoppage in play to clean up the mess.

During the break, officials conferred as the pass interference replay was broadcast over the stadium’s jumbotron. Loeffler then announced to a roaring crowd that there was no pass interference. Instead of Georgia having a first down, Texas gained possession at the 9.

It was a stunning and very rare reversal. After all, the officials had already called the pass interference foul and saw the ball for Georgia’s first down.

The exchange between Loeffler and Smart then unfolded on the sideline, with the seething coach waving his finger at the referee. Afterwards, Smart says Loeffler told him the referee called the penalty on the “wrong man,” suggesting it should have been an offensive pass interference on intended receiver Smith. A replay showed the two jostling each other with no clear indication of whether an error had been committed at all.

“It took him a long time to realize that,” Smart joked.

While on the field after the game, Georgia President Jere Morehead and athletic director Josh Brooks, clearly still frustrated, declined comment on the pass interference reversal. Morehead was seen talking to SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey while on the field.

Meanwhile, in the UGA locker room, music blared and voices sang. The Georgia Bulldogs, losers to Alabama and survivors in a matchup against Kentucky, suddenly find themselves in prime position to earn an at-large bid in the CFP, or even advance to the championship game.

In fact, here we are, eight weeks into the season, and there are no undefeated teams in the SEC.

Despite the doubters and the ‘robbery’, Smart’s group left this stadium with a victory, just as he thought they would: punishment or no punishment.

“They don’t give up,” he said. “There would be no relapse.”