Gordon Riese

Who is Gordon Riese?

Gordon Riese is a former college baseball pitcher in the 1960s who was inducted into the Portland State University Hall of Fame in 1997. He has spent the last 28 years as a Pac-10 Conference football official. He was the line judge during the 1982 Stanford-California game when "The Play" helped California win, 25-20.

Riese later worked as a referee in the Pac-10 and was the head of the officiating crew that worked the first Bowl Championship Series championship game, the Fiesta Bowl between Florida State and Tennessee on January 4, 1999. His final game on the field came on January 1, 2005 at the Fiesta Bowl between Pitt and Utah.

In December 2004, Riese was the referee in a UCLA-USC game with officiating issues. Spencer Havner picked up a fumble near the end of the first half and appeared to be unabated to the end zone, but the fumble was called back because of an inadvertent whistle. USC kicked a field goal and went into the half up 20-10 instead of tied 17-17. The Trojans won 29-24 to cap an undefeated regular season and ended up beating Oklahoma 55-19 to win the BCS championship.

On September 16, 2006 Riese served as the instant replay official of the University of Oklahoma-University of Oregon football game in Eugene, Oregon. During the final minutes of the game two plays were sent to his booth. The first was an onside kick by Oregon with a little over a minute remaining. The ruling on the field was that Oregon had recovered the onside kick, but the play went to the booth for review for the purpose of evaluating whether Oregon had illegally touched the ball before it had traveled 10 yards. Those watching the game at home were given multiple angles of the play, and many agreed with the broadcast commentators that Oregon had done so, thereby giving possession to the University of Oklahoma.