ATLANTA — Georgia defensive back Christopher Smith shocked everybody in the first quarter of the SEC Championship when he picked up a blocked field goal and returned it 95 yards for a touchdown, much to the dismay of LSU.
The kick was blocked and the ball sputtered to the 5-yard line before much of LSU and even some UGA players assumed it was a dead ball. That's when Smith went over, paused, and then picked up the ball with a convoy ahead and no LSU players in sight.
But was it a legal play?
According to the official NCAA rulebook, a field goal is a "scrimmage kick" and may be freely picked up by the defense (or offense) and returned once the ball has crossed the neutral zone, or better known as the line of scrimmage. This means that if an LSU player picked the ball up it would have been dead and Georgia would have taken over at that spot. But since UGA recovered the kick, they were free to recover it with it being a live ball in play. So, the answer is yes.
Watch a video of the full play here: