By: Leigh Steinberg
ORIGINAL POST on Forbes.com
For most of its' history, professional and collegiate sports thrived mightily without the hindrance of endless striving for perfection in the officials calls. Calls were undoubtedly blown, but the action stayed on the field, and officials had a way of restoring the competitive balance in those cases. The time consuming, boring interludes which attempt to inject scientific accuracy into game calls have become a hindrance to full enjoyment of sports on the field. Games drag on interminably, the excitement of a dramatic play is diluted by delay, momentum is ruined, and in the end there is still controversy. It was not until 1999 that the NFL adopted the current system, the NCAA started it in 2006, MLB in 2008, the NBA in 2008, so it is not a inherent part of what made sports popular. It is not sports heresy or apostasy to look at the destructive effect of replay.
1) Sports are played and officiated by real human beings. The way in which the human brain accesses and processes real time information varies from person to person. The ability to achieve scientific certainty is limited. Even when a play is reviewed from multiple angles it is still not crystal clear what the action shows. A reviewer of plays still brings his own judgment into the mix, it is not ultimately decided by a machine but by a subjective human. We allow official's subjective interpretations to govern many aspects of game play which are not reviewable. Part of the sports experience has always been to complain and object to officials calls, and those calls even out.
2) Review is boring and fills games with many more minutes of delay that detract from fan experience. For the fan sitting in attendance at a game, time passes without any play on the field. The fan watching on television usually is seeing more commercials. Boring and a waste of time. In an era where many fans have shortened attention spans, injecting more breaks in the action and empty moments does not enhance the experience.
3) Replay separates an exciting play on the field from fans. When every touchdown in a football game is reviewed, it detracts from the thrill of the game. A dramatic play occurs, the fans scream and yell with passion, and then that thrill becomes an excruciating delay as the final result is reviewed. Was it a touchdown? Letting the officials call the game on the field results in a more intense experience.
4) Replays kill momentum and alter the natural flow of a game. A football team builds momentum on a drive, plays at an elevated level and a reviewed play breaks the tempo. A baseball team puts together a big inning and rally and then a challenge breaks the energy. Players stand around doing nothing.
5) Challenged decisions by referees cannot be reversed unless there is "conclusive evidence" that the play was called wrong on the field. The burden is on a human being to draw that conclusion. Clearly calls that were wrong are upheld anyway because of the burden of proof. We have no idea who the anonymous person making that challenge decision is, what their qualifications are. Does anyone review the reviewers?
It is time to retire challenges and reviews to the dustbin of failed experiments. Does anyone believe that this process has greatly enhanced our enjoyment of the game. Any suggestion of change in sports risks ridicule and scorn. The play needs to move back to the field so we can enjoy the games fully.