Replay

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The Eye on the Sideline



Imagine sitting at home on a nice fall Saturday afternoon watching your favorite college football team playing a game. Your team is winning by 3 with one minute to go. The other teams throws a pass into the endzone and the receiver makes the catch but it looks as if he came down out of bounds. You see the referee signaling the touchdown, but as the replay comes on you can clearly see that the receiver was out of bounds. Your team ends up losing on the botched call. It’s a horrible felling when your team deserves to win but doesn’t on the account of the referees. This example is rare but similar occurrences happen like it all the time that changes the whole outcome of a game. Even though the Big Ten is experimenting this year with instant replay in conference games a lot of people are totally against instant replay in college football.
Two years ago in an AFC playoff football game, the New England Patriots were
trailing the Oakland Raiders 13-10 with 1:43 to play. The Patriots were driving and had the ball on the Oakland forty-two yard line when their quarterback, Tom Brady dropped back to pass. Off of the corner came Charles Woodson on a cornerback blitz. He reached up and hit the ball from Tom Brady’s hand and it was recovered by Oakland. Everyone thought that Oakland had recovered the fumble and the game was all but over. That’s when instant replay came into significance. The play was reviewed and it was found that the quarterback’s arm was moving forward to pass the ball when it was stripped. That changed the ruling to an incomplete pass. New England went on to win the game, and two games later, the super bowl. That game is a perfect example of why we must implement instant replay in all games, college or pro.
Currently there is instant replay in the National Football League and the National Hockey League. In basketball the referees can check the replay to see if a play...