Instant Replay In Sports

Are Replay’s in Sports a Good Thing

We have seen many close plays in professional sports recently and some of these plays have affected the outcome of the game. The installation of instant replay in sports like baseball and basketball has already helped correct many calls that the referees or umpires have made mistakes on. These calls can drastically alter the outcome of games and change the success of a team for the season or in the playoffs. Most sports are now adopting the instant replay in some way, whether it be reviews or the MacCam in tennis. I would predict that in the next two or three years every professional sport will have some form of an instant replay system. Now that the leagues are beginning to install instant replay into the game they should now expand on this and make more plays reviewable. As seen in cases in the NBA and MLB only certain plays are reviewable and in NBA they only do replay during certain times of the game. If this change is made and more plays and situation are review able it will make the instant replay system more effective and there will be a lot less games decided by a bad call.   

This is especially true in the NBA as replays only occur in the final two minutes of the game or the second quarter. In certain cases they will review a play throughout the game if the coach request a review and the referees decide that a review is necessary. For example the majority of the reviews in the NBA are for out of bounds plays or shot clock and game clock questions to determine if the player got the shot of in time or not. Many times there is a questionable call made on fouls, I agree that a personal foul should be a judgment call and should not be reviewable. I would say that charging and blocking fouls should be reviewable because in a lot of cases the referee has a bad angle and can’t see if the player was set or if he was moving and these calls are very important call in the game. Another play that should be reviewable at all times is traveling. This is because in the NBA traveling is never called but every player travels multiple times throughout a game and this would determine a change in possession which can change the score and outcome of the game. The league has made progress in the replay system over the past few seasons and with a couple of changes to the system the league could better its system and further help the game.

Baseball is the most recent sport to adopt an instant replay system, and so far it has been successful. There rule is that each team is given one challenge for the entire game, if you win your challenge you will be given a second one, if you lose you have no more challenges. This is similar to the way the NFL runs its replay system. For the MLB the replay system was greatly needed as many games were decided by a poor call and there was no way to challenge it. In the past season and a half of MLB play there has been many overturned calls that have helped umpires correct the calls they had gotten wrong. These corrected calls can save runs if the call is out or give teams more base runners to drive in and score more runs if the call is safe. The same goes for fair or foul as when the ball is down the line it is hard to tell if it is fair or foul and these calls are extremely important throughout the game. Balls and Strikes should be kept as a judgment call for the plate umpire and should never be reviewable because there would be challenges happening on almost every pitch throughout the game. The limit in the number of replays that you can use in a game is also a good thing to have as it makes the coaches think harder on whether or not to challenge as opposed to challenging every close play. In the MLB the main problem that needs to be fixed with the replay is the amount of time it takes as many times it takes around 4 or 5 minutes to solve the issues and that is much too long to make a decision.

The NFL has had the replay system for the longest of any sport and has been the most successful. Allowing each team 2 challenges per game and having no challenges in the last two minutes of the half or game and only official reviews can occur in this time. Overall the NFL has a very strong replay method using the booth review. In each sport that has started using replay there has been a major improvement on the number of calls that have been wrong. This therefore makes the game a lot about how the players play during the game rather than allowing the umpires or referees to decide the outcome of the game. The replays need to be solved faster is the only major problem with replays in sports. When the reviews take too long it takes away from the game so the referees need to solve the problems in a faster manner. In my opinion replays are necessary in professional sports and each sport needs some form of a replay system to help limit the number of mistakes made by referees or umpires throughout a game