Big news out of the NFL Owners' Meeting yesterday. Replay is expanding! Yay!! (not really yay). Just another step down a dumb road.
I remember being young, and playing sports. I remember being upset when a called penalty, or missed call, or bad call from a referee/umpire. What I remember mostly is Dad saying "A bad call is part of the game." Now, Dad was also a referee and umpire in my youth league games, so maybe it's a little self protection on his part for when he rung me up on strikes freshman year on a curve ball, that was plainly outside. that he, to this day, says caught the outside corner. Yeah, of the OTHER BATTERS BOX!!! But I digress......
A bad call is part of the game. It happens, and what we've heard time and again before replay was that they get the vast majority of calls right. But, hey we still got instant replay anyway. We have the technology to get it right all the time. Sure, it slows the game a little, but they can get the calls right. The only problem is, they don't, They have always gotten the vast majority of non reviewed calls correct. Let's call it 98%. I'm aware of no studies, but as an avid watcher of sports, my anecdotal number is 98% correct without replay. Now with replay. they STILL BLOW CALLS! It's not 100%. They're still caught up in language, and what constitutes "clear visual evidence" that a call must be reversed. Yet, we watch games, see a call - say a fumble - and on replay we see what should not be called a fumble. Yet the call is not reversed. Time and again, they get it wrong. Let's say they now get it right 99% of the time with replay.
I'm a Packer fan. Packer fans who support replay love to point to the 98 playoffs as a supporting point for instant replay. Jerry Rice fumbled, but the call was incomplete pass, and no fumble. It was plainly a fumble. Packer fans argue that with replay the Packers would have taken over there, and run out the clock to win. There would have been no final play TD pass to Terrell Owens. I say no. I've seen enough bad replay non-corrections. or erroneous upheld calls. to convince me that the officials would have blown that replay too.
Now like I said, a bad call is part of the game. I'm over the 98 playoffs, My point here is to offer the judgment that a 1% marginal improvement is not enough to justify replay review, but now the NFL is going to expand the scope of replay challenge to include judgment calls of pass interference, and coaches can challenge non calls that they think should have been called. This is a terrible idea. We excuse player mistakes on being human; bad pass - no one is perfect; fooled on a pitch and strike out swinging - game of failure. But for officials and umpires it's different. Collectively we call for more, and more replay, and computers calling balls and strikes. Sorry, I disagree. It's not improving the game. It's slowing the pace of play, and the marginal improvement in accuracy isn't enough to justify it. Non fumble calls are made, seen as fumbles on the replay at home, yet still not corrected. Now they're gonna ruin the game even more by throwing pass interference into the mix. Terrible idea. They should be going the other way.
I very rarely bring up freshman year baseball. A bad call is part of the game, and replay hasn't fixed it. It can't
