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Instant Replay Is Destroying Sports!

And Here Is Why!

By juul embiidPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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Let me start off by saying there is nothing worse than a blown call. Knowing your team was negatively effected not by what happened out there, but by an individual's ability to determine what happened out there can be awful.

There are good calls and there are bad ones. They have been a part of the game for as long as any of us can remember. That being said, what needs to be discussed are the lengths we go to in prevention of that. Each sport has individually established which plays are up for review and which aren't, prompting debate in itself. The fault isn't in the replay, or the idea of it, the fault lies with the officials who use the replay system as both a crutch and a substitute for making an accurate on the spot call. It's no secret that video reviews severely affect the pace of game no matter which sport you are watching, second only to a review of excessive time that still does not equate to an accurate call. There is no substitute for an on the spot call during a "bang-bang" play. With every throw to first, every catch in the end-zone, and every foul non foul under review, where do we draw the line? I mean they did some how get by before all this stuff came along, didn't they?

You wont find a sports fan, a real sports fan, who can honestly say they enjoy poor calls for or against their team. I agree with the effort being made to limit the number of egregious calls and prevent the game's outcome being determined by a referee, but they are humans in a game full of more humans. Blown calls are bound to happen, without a doubt you will see an umpire blunder something that you could have gotten right yourself...it happens! Through the course of a game, the course of a season, these things usually have a way of working themselves out, you find that under most circumstances, everyone profits as much as they peril.

My biggest quarrel with the replay systems currently employed is that it's 2018. No matter your television broadcast, you as a layman viewer have seen 5-7 slow motion angles of this play, and more often than not can determine what the outcome should be all on your own—a skill that these head replay offices could use (I Imagine they look a lot like a buffalo wild wings).

As we see now no system of review is perfect and there is severe doubt among those who enjoy the purity in sports that there ever will be. The word conclusive is thrown around a lot with these reviews, in sports they would like it to mean without a shadow of a doubt. Something that is almost impossible to achieve in or out of sports, and often times leads to acceptance of the original call on the field regardless of accuracy.

We have recently seen an increase in statements made by the professional sports leagues most notably the NBA, in which they have acknowledged both blown calls and poor officiating (even if in not so many words). With every decision, every out of bounds call, and every piece of action under scrutiny, you could understand the official's desire to simply protect themselves from the backlash that may come from a poor call. It is unfair to put these umpires, referees, and officials in that position. We've all had over the shoulder bosses. How many of us liked it, right?

The bottom line is that you cannot avoid the unavoidable. You also can't analyze every microcosm of every sporting event without severely affecting the time of play and pace of game. Let's do what we can do to get everything right, but let's do it within reason. Make a commitment to ensuring quality of the game and allow the head officials the power to make judgment calls.

Let's speed it up a little. We can all do without the three to five minute delay that comes with any review. We can do without the warm-up pitches now needed and anything else an athlete might need to get back into the flow of a game. If we are going to review the play for seven minutes, can we at least get it right? Every fan everywhere would like to know.

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