From Any Angle, It’s Worth It

Instant replay must stay.

There are reports going around that the anti-replay forces have increased in number, meaning that, at the next available opportunity, the NFL could very well abolish the instant-replay usage that has helped/hindered (choose one) the officiating of professional football.

Talk about alarming. Instant replay is the best thing ever to happen to pro sports. If baseball used it, it would spare the umpires much of the disgraceful, vile abuse they generally receive. If tennis used it, it would eliminate most of the childish tantrums and vulgarities that mar what is otherwise a splendid game.

Instant replay’s only drawback--if, indeed, you should call it a drawback--is that it impedes the progress of a football game, brings it to a tedious halt. So what? Can we not kill a couple of minutes to make sure an important play has been judged correctly? Can’t you go get some popcorn, or use the restroom, or stand up and stretch? Must instant replay be a waste of time?

Over the years, instant replay has become one of those over-discussed subjects, such as the designated-hitter rule and the disadvantages of artificial turf, and, as such, a topic to be avoided. But now that NFL executives appear to be rallying forces again to get to the game changed back to the way it used to be, this is no time to be quiet.

Everything you ever needed to know about instant replay could be summed in the “touchdown pass” to Art Monk that ostensibly opened the scoring Sunday in Super Bowl XXVI. The biggest game of the season and it could have opened with a mistake. Had a replay not detected Monk’s toes touching the back out-of-bounds stripe, the Washington Redskins would have scored six points that shouldn’t have counted.

About the only other argument that can be made against replay is that it dehumanizes the game--takes it out of the minds of men and turns it over to technology. This is like one of those debates in the 1950s over automation, about machines replacing human beings and Univac taking over the world.

Well, instant replay hasn’t put any NFL officials out of work. They still make the calls. Replay reviews their calls. It isn’t much different from a supervisor reviewing an employee’s work. Only in this case, the supervisor is a man viewing a videotape.

Is technology so terrible? Would it be so awful in the 21st Century to have a baseball batter step into a box in front of a strike zone of harmless laser beams that acted like electric eyes to buzz or beep whenever a pitch crosses the outside or inside corner? Or do you still prefer it when your favorite team loses a big game because the umpire called out your favorite hitter on a curveball 10 inches outside?

Instant replay has been around a long time; it’s almost amazing how long. The other day, a cable network aired a wonderful Billy Wilder film made in 1966, “The Fortune Cookie,” wherein much of the plot thickens at a football game played by the Cleveland Browns. Up in the broadcast booth is Keith Jackson, inviting us to view an instant replay of a halfback accidentally trampling (ironically) a TV camera man, played by Jack Lemmon.

Remember, this was 1966. Replay isn’t some newfangled gadget. It is part of the game’s standard equipment, same as a shot clock eventually became part of basketball’s, same as a red light bulb became part of hockey’s.

During another cable station’s recent look back (replay, if you will) at great moments in sportscasting, Lindsey Nelson remembered someone behind the scenes at a football game cueing him that they were now going to rewind and re-run the previous play.

Nelson said: “You’re going to do what? “

Now, instant replay is more than a luxury; it’s a necessity. The players are too large, the action too fast for football officials to be accurate.

They can’t see everything. Do we really want them to guess what happened when, with a brief pause that also provides the players themselves a welcome respite to catch their breath, we can find out what really happened?

Yes, baseball or basketball games would be made longer, but not needlessly. Yes, they would prefer to find ways to speed up baseball, not prolong it, but have we also forgotten that we once were entertained by doubleheaders, which kept us watching twice as much baseball on a given day as we do now?

After a “further review” by instant replay, there are no more arguments. Arguments delay games as much as replay reviews do. Let’s keep instant replay. Let’s keep instant replay.