Imagine it's the World Series. There are two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of game seven, and you're rounding third. If you score, the game is tied; if you are thrown out, your season is over.
You fly into home plate, dust billows everywhere as you slide beneath the catcher's tag, the umpire calls you safe and the crowd goes wild.
But wait – the umpires decide to review the play using instant replay. After minutes of waiting anxiously, they determine the catcher got the tag down based on the 35 different camera angles available to them. In 17 of those angles it appears you were safe, while the other 18 make it look like you were out. The crowd is stunned into silence, the other team celebrates on the field, and you walk dejectedly off the diamond.
That is the world that those who propose "just get it right" want us to live in. Don't get me wrong, replay has its place, but its place is not in every play, and not just because the play appears to be more important. Every year there are countless plays in every sport that are scoured over by officials, fans, TV crews and athletes. Sometimes two people looking at the same replay don't even see the same thing. But the truth is that sports existed for decades without instant replay. Why fix what isn't broken?
Every time there is some unforgivable bad call, people call for two things: the official who is responsible to be fired on the spot, and instant replay to take over the world of professional officiating. But people forget that the officials are as much a part of the games we watch as the athletes that compete.
By insisting that instant replay be used all the time to get every play right just doesn't make sense, logistically or otherwise. No one complains nearly as much about bad calls in the early moments of games as they do at very end.
Fans who bemoan an officials' judgment before the final moments are deemed nothing but overzealous fan, too concerned that one blown call will ruin their team's chances of winning the contest.
But the truth is every play and every call helps determine the outcome of the game.
The sports world only gets all riled up over the last minute calls because we tend to see the repercussions immediately after. If you were to transplant controversial fourth quarter calls into the second quarter, they become ‘what if' highlights on ESPN. Fans wonder if a blow out could have played out any other way due to a holding penalty during the second quarter.
Every sport is about being able to play, week-in, week-out regardless of what the athletes have to face, officials.
Clearly some calls are bad calls and some calls are good calls, but the solution is not to put the modern official on the endangered species list by introducing instant replay to every play in every sport known to man. The solution is to train officials better.
Human judgment and error are a part of every game, on both the competition and officiating sides. Sometimes the naked eye captures something different then would be seen if slowed down to one-frame per second. Unless the call is blatantly obvious, each team can argue that it should fall their way. Often times the real time judgment that officials make in the moment is the most accurate.
So the next time you have your TV set tuned to the Super Bowl or the World Series or just a regular season basketball game, and you see an official blow a call that seems too obvious to screw up, remember that it isn't too obvious because he just blew it, and it's all part of the plan. Your team may lose this game on a bad call that doesn't go its way, but it could win the next one on a bad call in their favor. It's called sports, and that's how it's supposed to be.
Email: sports@ubspectrum.com
