The Sugar Bowl is always one of college football’s most thrilling postseason matchups, filled with high stakes, intense competition, and unforgettable moments. For one player, Sugar Bowl will be remembered for a mistake that overshadowed what had been a promising season. Parker Jones, a standout defensive back for his team, found himself at the center of controversy after a costly penalty late in the game.
Parker Jones’ bizarre penalty was one of many things going against Georgia in its Sugar Bowl loss to Notre Dame. If you listen to some of social media’s more unhinged users, though, he was the reason the Bulldogs lost.
Infamy arrived for the walk-on cornerback on Thursday, as Georgia was trying to get on the board. It got its longest gain of the game early in the second quarter, when quarterback Gunner Stockton found wide receiver Arian Smith for a 67-yard pass.
The play would have set up Georgia on Notre Dame’s 11-yard line, until a flag was thrown. Jones, wearing a No. 39 jersey with sweatpants and no padding, was called for sideline interference after colliding with an official who was following Smith. The 15-yard penalty didn’t wipe out Smith’s big gain, but it did push Georgia back to the 26-yard line.
Georgia wound up kicking a field goal on that drive in a 23-10 loss.
The incident put all eyes on Jones, who is listed on Georgia’s website as a 5-foot-11, 190-pound redshirt sophomore who has recorded no stats in his time as a Georgia cornerback. He was not dressed for the game, but still found a way to make a negative impact.
It was a bad play. Of course, Georgia went on to make a number of other bad plays, with some much more impactful to the final score.
ESPN still seemed to think Jones’ contribution needed to be noted, however, as it was showing him wandering the sideline a full two quarters later — with the announcers noting how devastating this must be for him.
The bigger swing came at the end of the quarter, when a strip sack set Notre Dame up for its first touchdown of the night. And then there was the start of the third quarter, when the Fighting Irish scored a kick-return touchdown to make it 20-3. And when a comeback fizzled out because a tricky substitution led to a Georgia defender jumping offsides.
But it’s harder to joke about those, so Jones was the one trending as Georgia’s season ended. Social media can never resist a pile-on, even when there’s an actual human being, who was already having a bad day, lying at the bottom.