It's late in the fourth quarter, and your team is mounting a comeback while trailing 22-17. With 10 seconds left, the ball is on the opposition's 20-yard line. A touchdown will give your team the victory, but it's already fourth down. You can't turn away, but you're too nervous to watch. The quarterback takes the snap, and is immediately pressured by the defense. After getting away from three linebackers, who could easily be stunt doubles for Free Willy, the QB finally finds an open receiver, the tight end, in the back of the end zone. The quarterback makes the throw and the ball is caught, and the crowd goes wild.
Then the referees signal no touchdown.
The call is made that the receiver landed out of bounds, so the score doesn't count. When the replay is shown for the television audience, the receiver's feet are clearly in bounds, making the ref look like a Ray Charles wannabe, but the refs base their call on their judgment alone, and the call stands. Your team is robbed of a win in a drive for the touchdown.
Preventing referees from making bad calls (not to mention stopping obnoxious TV announcers from harping on said bad calls) can be accomplished by a system called Instant Replay. Instant Replay was instituted by the NFL in the mid-1980s to double check referee's calls through video playback. Problems arose when games that normally lasted three hours started lasting about three days. After 1991, Instant Replay was abolished and the NFL went back to the old system and the refs brought back out their Seeing-eye dogs. But why rest the outcome of a game on fallible referees, when the proper calls can be made with the use of a little technology?
Granted, the Instant Replay system wasn't perfect, and the games did seem to drag on a lot. But with a modified system, the Instant Replay could work without taking up too much time. The new system proposed by some owners would provide a monitor near the field where the referees could review the play in 90 seconds or less. Only three types of plays could be reviewed under the proposed system. Those three plays are: whether a player crosses the goal line with possession of the ball in a scoring attempt; whether the player is in bounds on a passing play, rushing play, or trying to recover a turnover; and whether a team has the correct number of players on the field. This system would decrease the number of incorrect calls and wouldn't slow the game down as much as under the old system, which didn't provide a limit to the types of plays reviewed.
My only complaint with the new system is that it isn't enough. Why not use Instant Replay for all plays? Why couldn't there be a designated official who checks every call made by the referees? If the call is obviously wrong, the head referee or another official would have the benefit of the new monitors to ensure the right call..
Instant Replay could be used in other sports too. Baseball, for example, could use the system. Okay, okay, balls and strikes shouldn't be checked, but making sure that an umpire is correct when he calls a ball foul or a runner out at first or if a fan interfered in the play wouldn't be that hard. Who can forget the infamous fan interference in the 1996 American League Championship series between the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees when a fan reached over the right field wall to give Derek Jeter a home run? With Instant Replay, the right call would have been made and New York wouldn't have won the game on a bad call - no offense to Yankee fans.
The NBA would be hard to check due to its fast pace, but why not check to see if a player shot the ball before time expired. Can you imagine having a game-winning three-pointer waived off by a ref who thought time expired when there was still half a second remaining? At least the NHL has seen the light. Hockey referees will look at video playback to see if a goal was truly scored. Even tennis is considering using an Instant Replay system.
A human referee is not all-knowing. Human beings make mistakes. And there are only two ways to make sure that those mistakes don't change the outcome of a game - either use some form of video playback or hire the Almighty to be a line judge. True, not all mistakes will be caught by video replay and the games will be slowed down a little, but some action must be taken. If I haven't convinced you by now, think of it this way: how would you like it if your team was robbed of a win by referees with Coke bottle glasses?