The Quest for Perfection Is Ruining Sports
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/warriors-rockets-fouls-referees-…
A good article by Will Leitch that talks about the Rockets vs. Warriors spat but also sports as a whole.
"The goal of instant replay was to make sure that no vital series would ever be decided by an official. The result appears to be that series will not be decided by the players and the fates, but by detailed memos and committee meetings."
"Technology was supposed to get us all closer to that objective truth, but all it’s doing is backing up one’s personal, subjective interpretation. We all see what we want to see. Technology doesn’t widen the perspective on truth. It just makes it easier to make up your own."
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a good, close game without any replays or artificial stoppages.
A guy can dream.
It was GREAT! And the games were way shorter too.
Sincerely,
Old people
Yes, because I want a sport I love to watch taking up as little of my time as possible.
I find this comment to be, well, stupid. The actual games weren't any shorter, but the downtime was significantly less. So yes, I would actually prefer the same amount of sport action take up as little time as possible.
This is a terrible take. An all-timer, actually.
Blame commercials for this. Stoppages for replay's and rulings wastes less time than commercials. every time out they take a commercial break, on top of the forced commercial break time outs.
And that's another thing. I think cable TV is ruining sports as well by saturating the market. I really wish we could just go back to the big three networks. Then the biggest games would still be appointment viewing, but everything else you could just read about the next morning.
As an added bonus, there would be no more cable news shows.
Seems like this could be easily achieved. Watch the "appointment viewing" game(s) you want to and read about the others the next morning. We're not in Russia (well maybe you are) where you are forced to watch all the games. Some goes for ignoring the cable news shows.
Hey Vlad...so you force people to watch sports?
This is why i enjoy watching soccer so much. ~45 minutes of uninterrupted play.
Big day for soccer later today.
Love the matchup of Barcelona/Liverpool. Ajax is having an insane run! Too bad most of their players will be gone after this summer.
Always liked Ajax if only because who would name a futbol team after a scouring powder? But when I think Dutch soccer I think Rutgerus Johannes Martinus van Nistelrooy. Just a sensational player who never quite got his due.
Way back on FIFA 99 i always played as the Netherlands national team. Bergkamp and Kluivert are the players i always think of. Van Nistelrooy was great as well. Still fairly new to watching it. Started following shortly before the 2010 World Cup. I don't have many people to discuss it with either. Luckily two of my roommates are soccer coaches at Davenport so they follow the sport pretty well.
Davenport in GR? ...Small world. Davenport is insanely good at sports. I am curious to see how good Sparky can get their football program good. They almost beat GVSU last season.
Davenport is pretty solid at sports for their size. The fact they play Division 2 football is insane to me.
I'm always curious how many members on this site are currently living in this area.
Another stink bomb, let’s get rid of 4 team BCS, go to __ team format....;-)
What a grumpy old man! lol
Who pissed in your wheaties this morning?
After all, how bad were the Phantom Touchdown or Spartan Bob, anyway? Sure we got jobbed, but at least we didn’t have to wait through replays to fix it.
However I have no confidence at all that they would have changed those calls.
Even with instant replay they are still wrong a lot.
Every game.
For sure -- now that we have replay, Michigan never gets jobbed!
A Rose Bowl against USC blows this theory out of the water.
I loathe USC nearly as much as BlowSU and Notre Lame...
Which Rose Bowl? The game where the field was only 98-yards long or the game where phantom clipping calls were in style?
I usually agree with Leitch but I’m not there on this take. There is one version of the truth and instant replay gets us closer to it. Is it perfect? No. Sometimes things are too close to call, sometimes the refs viewing the replay are completely incompetent (not the fault of replay, by the way), etc. But it’s a tool. If used properly it is helpful. The issue is in how it’s deployed, not the introduction of instant replay in the first place.
This is an oddly “get off my lawn” take from Leitch.
He didn't say we should get rid of replay entirely. I agree with the article and most of what you say. I don't think those things are contradictory.
Also, the article isn't just, or perhaps even mainly, about specific calls. It's about how those calls then get treated in the media and by players and coaches. The BS basketball stuff he talks about is a great example. Because of all the replays and the obsession with "getting it right", those discussions and complaints are getting louder and angrier but just as biased as they used to be.
My apologies if I read it wrong as I fed a baby in the middle of the night. I think there needs to be some serious thought around how and when replay is employed, but the added benefit of it being available to help get things correct in key moments outweighs the frustration of some of its side effects.
The problem is they still don't get it correct all the time. How many times have you seen the PBP man, the analyst and the old ref hired by the network all say something was going to get changed and then it isn't. The announcers are all dumbstruck and replay has failed yet again.
Instant replay should be used, but used very sparingly. For instance, any sport that has a protocol that under a certain time limit replays are automatically initiated is absolutely pointless. The NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME in college basketball was determined by zooming in on the atomic structure of a Texas Tech player and saying that one atom of his skin brushed past an atom on the basketball. Never mind the fact that the ball was literally knocked away from him by a UVA player.
As a fan of teams that have been absolutely screwed by the lack of replay in sports (Galarraga perfect game, Burke clean block, countless Lions plays (let's go with the made up facemask call for Rodgers before his hail mary), long snapper roughed against MSU in 2015, and so many more), I would still rather have those plays happen every so often than watch every single sporting event take 5 hours because of timeouts and reviews. That's how much I can't stand them.
Unfortunately, the Burke "foul" would not have been reviewable, as it was a judgment call.
I'm with ya Milk. Like soooo much of modern media it's the law of unintended consequences. Did we realize that Facebook would be a force for divisiveness as much as for coming together? Did we anticipate that instant replay would sew uncertainty and discord as much as clarity and agreement?
Speaking of FB ... My wife joined briefly about 8 years ago, then promptly left. She could already see where it was headed and decided she wanted no part of it.
So, yes, that's a long way of saying that she's smarter than I am. I know, that's not saying a lot.
This is kinda where I'm at. I thought replay would mean I would be less angry about officiating decisions affecting the teams I love. Instead, it's just added a whole new dimension of things to feel cheated by. I still get just as mad about the officiating and still disagree with just as many calls. I still get mad about replay rulings and think officials screw them up. Only now the flow of the game is garbage and a bunch of my time is wasted. And worse, sometimes the replay calls are technically correct (and therefore should be made), but violate the spirit of the game. That's a whole new way to feel ripped off.
If we could find a way to get replay to happen promptly and only when it's clearly needed to preserve the integrity of the contest within the spirit of the rules, great. But it doesn't seem like this will happen, and so the main effect of replay is to make my experience watching sports vastly worse.
Remember the time when everyone wanted instant replay and it will solve all the problems in the sports? Well, it didn't solve all the problems. But it definitely made refs make less mistakes under critical moments. Sad part is that we got hosed twice on instant replays against our rivals. Guess what? If there are instant replays I am pretty sure the calls would have gone in favor of MSU and OSU. Regardless, I would rather have instant replays. Now if we can have better, well paid, unbiased refs on top of instant replays, the errors can be further minimized.
Just get rid of it. Half the time the reviewer gets it wrong anyway and most of the game changing calls can't be reviewed anyway. As mentioned above, Burke's block, for instance.
I am firmly in this camp as well. If you can replay down to the nano second and still get the call wrong than what is the point? The only compromise I would have is to remove the "indisputable video evidence" stipulation. DPJ clearly had one foot down in bounds before the other against Wisconsin, but because there wasn't a perfect angle on the ground showing it 100% they call the touchdown out due to the original call on the field. Are we afraid of hurting referees feelings by reversing a call that we can see in super slow motion and no one expects them to get right 100% of the time anyway?
Yeah, it’s nearly ruined the buzzer beater. Now a last second shot celebration is immediately stopped and followed by 5 minutes of everyone standing around.
I think I'm OK with the people waiting around a couple minutes to make sure that they don't blow a massive call.
Get it right. Don't care how long it takes. As much as people complain about replays, it doesn't add much to the game. I'm already dedicating 2-3 hours for a sports event, I can handle an extra 15 minutes if accuracy is improved.
"Don't care how long it takes." Unfortunately, replay officials seem to view this as a challenge, rather than a concern to be avoided. And heck, we can shoehorn in a few more commercials while we're at it -- it's a win-win!
Replay has been around for a long time now and I still cannot say that I am a big fan. If you put a gun to my head and said keep it or scrap it, I would say scrap it. I don't like it in basketball as it has brought some fantastic games to a screeching halt. I absolutely abhor it for baseball as it has changed the way the game has been called forever to get far to "literal" on the calls. This just doesn't seem to be in line with the spirit of the game. Talk of an automated strike zone makes me cringe. Outside of the stoppage time for football, I like it for fumbles and catches. Other than that, it seems to be doing more harm than good.
I would love an automated strike zone, if it were simply something the home plate umpire used to determine ball/strike calls transparently and within the flow of the game. Variable strike zones shouldn't be a part of baseball. I think you could do it in a way that a casual fan would never even notice.
But I agree with so many other calls in baseball being taken far too literally. Players were never meant to be called out for executing a pop-up slide and having their toe hover above the surface of the bag just out of contact for a split second. That trash is pedantic nonsense.
I like the variable strike zone very much. That's one the beauties of the game. Each night maybe the guy behind the plate likes the high strike and the next night maybe it's the low strike. Either way, the MLB umps are very consistent for the most part and the hitters just need to adjust. That's just part of the game and a part I like.
Your 2nd point is spot on and well said.
Variable strike zones have a massive negative impact on the game. It's not fair for one inning to be called one way, and then the team gets impacted differently the next time around the cycle if the ump changes it. Could you imagine basketball games where they tilt one side of the rim slightly at random intervals? Or have it be like Blades of Steel and have the goalie randomly slide up and down at different speeds.
Gotta automate it. Get it right.
I have a bigger problem with refs seemingly missing regular calls all the time. I don't ever remember it being this bad from about 2000 to 2010 when I first really got into sports. I remember the Nebraska Alamo Bowl sticking out like a sore thumb in terms of terrible refs, now it seems like it's once per season or so.
This is where I'm at.
Sure reviewed plays sometimes get screwed up or take too long. But my gosh, how on earth are all these refs totally blowing blatant normal calls throughout the meat of the game so frequently??
"Spirit of the rule" should be taken into account for replays. How many times have replays decided a play that was correct per the rules but against the spirit of the rule, or what the rule was intended to do? The whole not being able to review penalties thing comes to mind in football. A player interferes and gets an interception, but the refs cannot look at the interference part. There should be a check for the refs to say, "what is the right thing to do here in the spirit of the rule/game?"
Yes, lets use technology to gather as much objective information as possible and then add a layer of subjectivity on top of that - what does the replay official think the rule probably means? I'm sure that won't cause any problems.
There already is a layer of subjectivity on top. I'm saying that subjectivity should favor what the rule was intended to stop and not the letter of the rule. Remember the Lions vs the Falcons? https://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2017/9/24/16358414/lions-falcons-10-second-runoff-end
That kind of stuff shouldn't happen.
Who decides what the rule was intended to stop? If the letter of the rule doesn't match the spirit of the rule, then change the letter of the rule. Not a lawyer, but isn't this kind of like "case law."