The best thing about sports is that they're un-scripted. On any given day, any team can come out on top.
Athletes, like the rest of us, have good and bad days. Just think about any major upset and you'll realize that this is an undeniable truth.
See the 1980 Olympics when the American national team knocked off the star-studded Soviets to win the gold medal. This game is referred to as the Miracle on Ice. They made a movie on it. It's arguably the greatest upset of all time. Enough said.
Or how about when the New York Giants defeated the mighty New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII? The Giants were one play away from watching Tom Brady and Bill Belichick march off the field undefeated, grinning from ear to ear. Instead, David Tyree made one of the most remarkable catches ever, helping the Giants win. The numbers 18-1 now haunt everyone in the Boston area.
More examples: Robin Soderling besting number-one seeded Rafael Nadal at the 2009 French Open, Division I-AA Appalachian State topping No. 5 nationally-ranked Michigan to end the Wolverines' season before it really started, and Buster Douglas, a 42-to-1 underdog, KOing Mike Tyson and shocking the world.
The point is that there's a human aspect in sports. Aside from scoring ridiculous goals, knocking down impossible jump shots, and drilling 400-foot homeruns, athletes go home every night and deal with similar issues that we everyday people face.
That's what makes sports great. We get to watch real people competing at the highest level. We witness bad days that turn into terrible losses.
So why have we become so dependent on video replay?
Referees are human, too. The mistakes that they make are part of the game, so why do we go out of our way to correct them?
I've seen a ton of basketball games that lasted 20 extra minutes because the officials reviewed every little detail of the game. Granted, sometimes the replay can be helpful, but is it always necessary? It prolongs the game, often changes the outcome, and, most importantly, gives refs too much leeway to make mistakes.
Sure, Ireland got the short end of the stick when the refs missed two hand-ball calls on Thierry Henry, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. It happens. No matter how hard it is for coaches, players and fans to watch the botched call the next day on SportsCenter, we must remember that mistakes are part of the game.
When writing an essay, how carefully do you inspect every word that you type? Unless your anal, you know that spell check is going to fix your mistakes. Yes, you'll check your final product and find that your wrote 'on' instead of 'no' and the computer didn't recognize the error, however, I argue that before technology, people were a lot more diligent when writing and were probably better spellers.
The same applies for refs and instant replay. Though they'll never admit it, knowing that you have the crutch of video footage helping you call the game hurts your sharpness and accuracy. If your mistakes are easily correctable, you become more prone to mess up.
Blown calls suck and can leave a sports fan feeling cheated, but they're undoubtedly a part of the game. Before there were a million cameras flashing and recording every sporting event, video replay wasn't even a question. Sports made it this far without the sports spell check, so let's not jump on the bandwagon and try to change something that has withstood the test of time.
If it ain't broke…
E-mail: andrew.wiktor@ubspectrum.com
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