Old, old complaint, that referees and umpires cannot follow the action properly, fast enough and without bias, and their imperfections change the outcomes of games and seasons. Watching today’s Liverpool-Manchester United match, I heard one of the announcers say the old saw is that these errors even out over the course of a season.
Tell that to Ron Zook, football coach at the University of Florida, who lost a key game and probably a shot at the national title when the officials made two key errors in the same sequence at the end of this past Saturday’s game at Tennessee. First the official, who was standing not five yards away from the players and clearly saw the entire interaction, ignored one player’s foul but not another in throwing only one yellow flag. Cost Florida 15 yards and if not a first down (I don’t remember precisely), then certainly important field position. Second, the officials did not properly restart the clock on a play, giving Tennessee an extra 20-25 seconds of play. Between them these mistakes gave the Vols a shot at a last bit field goal which was made to win the game 30-28.
In today’s EPL match the key error was awarding a corner kick to ManU in the 66th minute, when the ball clearly went over the end line off a Red Devils player, and they scored when Mikael Silvestre got his head on the kick and went net. That was the winning goal!
So, old news. Today, though, we have sensor technology and software that can easily overcome many of the human imperfections. Who touched last, is the ball in or out of bounds, is the player offside? All can be measured with better than millimeter precision. Hook a rules engine into the official clock and starts and stops are no problem, not to mention determining whether the offense in (American) football snapped the ball on time or got a shot off before the shot clock expired.
On SportsFilter and elsewhere people complain that using technology will ruin the games or at least remove a necessary human element, that humans are imperfect and so errors should be part of sport. Call me a geek but all I see is that such usage will allow the players to play the game without mistakes by officiating which is at best a necessary evil in my eyes.
BillSaysThis 