The wait is finally over. After six years, the NFL last week reversed itself and eliminated its controversial instant-replay rule. In the previous two years, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue had barely mustered the three-fourths majority needed to maintain replay. This time only 17 of the 28 owners voted to keep the rule. Several, while insisting that they love it in theory, said replay has proved both imperfect and interminable. “In practice, it stinks,” said Eagles owner Norman Braman. The losing owners predicted more problems. “It’s a step backward,” said Jim Finks, New Orleans Saints president and chairman of the league’s competitiveness committee. “We’re going to regret voting it down.”
So, according to polls, will the fans. But, in truth, sports polls are as suspect as any others. Football traditionalists may be as reluctant to confess their Luddite longings as voters are to reveal their passions for fringe candidates. For fans watching at home, the instant-replay delays were a chance to leave the room, raid the refrigerator or read a story to a young child. Now those pursuits will be available only during the beer commercials. For the privileged faithful who actually go to NFL games, the two-minute breaks were an endurance test on cold days-and inadequate to brave bathroom or food lines. Out of such stultification grew The Wave.
It is no surprise that the reaction of football announcers ranged from Al Michaels’s “regrettable” to Paul Maguire’s “disastrous.” After all, what is being reversed is not just a rule but the cease into sports by television. Pro football first became a national obsession by featuring confrontations between running back Jim Brown and middle linebacker Sam Huff. It’s not an accident that the most notable football personalities since Brown and Huff left the field have been Howard Cosell and John Madden.
Rudy Martzke, USA Today’s influential TV-sports columnist, subscribes to the notion that the ultimate value of instant replay was that it aspired to justice. “That should be the most important goal of the game,” he says, “to arrive at the best possible verdict on the field.” But justice is seldom the only purpose to which television technology is put. Even TV in the courtroom, an experiment designed to help elucidate American jurisprudence, has become just another competitor to Oprah.
Instant replay is not about to disappear. At home, fans will still get to relive each play. And other sports will continue to rely on the camera: the photo finish in horse racing or track is nothing more than instant replay by another name. But a footrace has a distinct advantage over football-the camera is in exactly the right place. That was not the case for the NFL. The number and direction of the cameras depended on which network was covering the game and how important it was.
For all the chatter, the rule hasn’t been that important. Its high point came at the last Super Bowl when Washington Redskins receiver Art Monk’s apparent touchdown was called back after the camera revealed his toe touching down over the end-zone line. In Super Bowl XXI, the replay official reversed a completed pass thrown by John Elway of the Broncos. On the next play the Giants tackled him in the end zone for a safety-two points. There’s only been one NFL game decided on the final play by a replay reversal-and the official got that one wrong. He ruled that Green Bay quarterback Don Majkowski had thrown a legal touchdown pass to beat the Chicago Bears. Three years later Bears owner Michael McCaskey led the crusade against the rule,
Replay was only as good as the camera angles and the officials who reviewed the film. Analysis of the 90 calls actually reversed during the 1991-92 season showed that 10 percent-even with benefit of all those slo-mo replays-were incorrectly reversed. Another dozen calls that weren’t reversed should have been. Add on those bad calls-such as missed penalties-that instant replay was never empowered to correct, and the technology begins to look like another imperfect layer.
The human layer may not actually be all that imperfect. Studies by Dr. Marcel Kinsbourne, a neurologist at Boston University Medical School, indicate that subjects confronted by rapid-fire visual presentations will make correct determinations about 90 percent of the time. On the football field, at slightly slower speeds, officials probably do significantly better. “We’re not perfect, but we sure don’t make as many mistakes as the players and coaches,” says Edward Marion, an NFL official for 28 years who recently retired as executive director of the Professional Football Referees Association. “And when we do, well, we ought to have the balls to admit it.”
What if a bad call should decide a Big Game? They have, most recently in 1985. Only the sport was baseball and the event was the World Series. With the St. Louis Cardinals just three outs from winning a fourth and deciding game, umpire Don Denkinger butchered a call at first base that led to a Kansas City rally. The next night, the Royals won the Series. The Fall Classic survived-so did St. Louis-and baseball bores had something else to go on about.
Some football fans, like Harvard law school professor Randall Kennedy, point out that the NFL decision to stifle appeals comes at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court is drastically curtailing appeals available to death-row inmates. And, with. out a doubt, the fans and the press seem more concerned with habeas corpus on the football field. Maybe that’s because foot, ball is only a game. And it’s a game that has, of late, been far too preoccupied with X’s and O’s, point spreads and, yes, replays. Pro football might take a cue from pro basketball, the game that during the past decade usurped its status as the nation’s “hot” sport. Nobody ever had to wait two minutes to find out if Magic’s, Michael’s or Larry’s buzzer beater counted. And nobody ever wanted to.
1 Did Majkowski cross scrimmage before tossing this game-winner? No, sais the replay.
2 After a video voiding of a completed pass, the Giants sacked Elway for a safety.
3 Monk seemed to catch a TD in the Super Bowl, but the replay saw him land out of bounds.
title: “No Instant Answers” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-07” author: “Jeniffer Howland”
The wait is finally over. After six years, the NFL last week reversed itself and eliminated its controversial instant-replay rule. In the previous two years, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue had barely mustered the three-fourths majority needed to maintain replay. This time only 17 of the 28 owners voted to keep the rule. Several, while insisting that they love it in theory, said replay has proved both imperfect and interminable. “In practice, it stinks,” said Eagles owner Norman Braman. The losing owners predicted more problems. “It’s a step backward,” said Jim Finks, New Orleans Saints president and chairman of the league’s competitiveness committee. “We’re going to regret voting it down.”
So, according to polls, will the fans. But, in truth, sports polls are as suspect as any others. Football traditionalists may be as reluctant to confess their Luddite longings as voters are to reveal their passions for fringe candidates. For fans watching at home, the instant-replay delays were a chance to leave the room, raid the refrigerator or read a story to a young child. Now those pursuits will be available only during the beer commercials. For the privileged faithful who actually go to NFL games, the two-minute breaks were an endurance test on cold days-and inadequate to brave bathroom or food lines. Out of such stultification grew The Wave.
It is no surprise that the reaction of football announcers ranged from Al Michaels’s “regrettable” to Paul Maguire’s “disastrous.” After all, what is being reversed is not just a rule but the cease into sports by television. Pro football first became a national obsession by featuring confrontations between running back Jim Brown and middle linebacker Sam Huff. It’s not an accident that the most notable football personalities since Brown and Huff left the field have been Howard Cosell and John Madden.
Rudy Martzke, USA Today’s influential TV-sports columnist, subscribes to the notion that the ultimate value of instant replay was that it aspired to justice. “That should be the most important goal of the game,” he says, “to arrive at the best possible verdict on the field.” But justice is seldom the only purpose to which television technology is put. Even TV in the courtroom, an experiment designed to help elucidate American jurisprudence, has become just another competitor to Oprah.
Instant replay is not about to disappear. At home, fans will still get to relive each play. And other sports will continue to rely on the camera: the photo finish in horse racing or track is nothing more than instant replay by another name. But a footrace has a distinct advantage over football-the camera is in exactly the right place. That was not the case for the NFL. The number and direction of the cameras depended on which network was covering the game and how important it was.
For all the chatter, the rule hasn’t been that important. Its high point came at the last Super Bowl when Washington Redskins receiver Art Monk’s apparent touchdown was called back after the camera revealed his toe touching down over the end-zone line. In Super Bowl XXI, the replay official reversed a completed pass thrown by John Elway of the Broncos. On the next play the Giants tackled him in the end zone for a safety-two points. There’s only been one NFL game decided on the final play by a replay reversal-and the official got that one wrong. He ruled that Green Bay quarterback Don Majkowski had thrown a legal touchdown pass to beat the Chicago Bears. Three years later Bears owner Michael McCaskey led the crusade against the rule,
Replay was only as good as the camera angles and the officials who reviewed the film. Analysis of the 90 calls actually reversed during the 1991-92 season showed that 10 percent-even with benefit of all those slo-mo replays-were incorrectly reversed. Another dozen calls that weren’t reversed should have been. Add on those bad calls-such as missed penalties-that instant replay was never empowered to correct, and the technology begins to look like another imperfect layer.
The human layer may not actually be all that imperfect. Studies by Dr. Marcel Kinsbourne, a neurologist at Boston University Medical School, indicate that subjects confronted by rapid-fire visual presentations will make correct determinations about 90 percent of the time. On the football field, at slightly slower speeds, officials probably do significantly better. “We’re not perfect, but we sure don’t make as many mistakes as the players and coaches,” says Edward Marion, an NFL official for 28 years who recently retired as executive director of the Professional Football Referees Association. “And when we do, well, we ought to have the balls to admit it.”
What if a bad call should decide a Big Game? They have, most recently in 1985. Only the sport was baseball and the event was the World Series. With the St. Louis Cardinals just three outs from winning a fourth and deciding game, umpire Don Denkinger butchered a call at first base that led to a Kansas City rally. The next night, the Royals won the Series. The Fall Classic survived-so did St. Louis-and baseball bores had something else to go on about.
Some football fans, like Harvard law school professor Randall Kennedy, point out that the NFL decision to stifle appeals comes at a time when the U.S. Supreme Court is drastically curtailing appeals available to death-row inmates. And, with. out a doubt, the fans and the press seem more concerned with habeas corpus on the football field. Maybe that’s because foot, ball is only a game. And it’s a game that has, of late, been far too preoccupied with X’s and O’s, point spreads and, yes, replays. Pro football might take a cue from pro basketball, the game that during the past decade usurped its status as the nation’s “hot” sport. Nobody ever had to wait two minutes to find out if Magic’s, Michael’s or Larry’s buzzer beater counted. And nobody ever wanted to.
1 Did Majkowski cross scrimmage before tossing this game-winner? No, sais the replay.
2 After a video voiding of a completed pass, the Giants sacked Elway for a safety.
3 Monk seemed to catch a TD in the Super Bowl, but the replay saw him land out of bounds.
