Instant Replay, Anyone?

Tuesday, November 16, 2004 10:30 am Daniel J. Summers

Instant Replay has been used in the NFL for a few years now, and this year, the NCAA's Big 10 conference has instituted it as well. I prefer the NFL's rules, where the coach is allowed two challenges, and if both are overturned, a third. Challenges are not allowed during the final two minutes of play, so they can't be used as “extra time-outs” during the game; and, if a challenge fails to result in a changed call, the team is charged a time-out. In my opinion, it has been quite successful in helping to correct some pretty bad calls.

The most recent contender for a clearly overturnable call was the non-call of pass interference in Saturday's LSU/Alabama game. An LSU defender pushed the Alabama receiver down, intercepted a pass, and ran it back out to the middle of the field. It was a game-changing ruling - Alabama had been struggling (and continued to struggle) to move the ball, and was close to scoring. Now, I'm no Alabama fan (Go Vols!!!), but that call was flat out wrong.

College football is such big business these days - we've got human rankings, computer rankings, and a collage of them together helping us decide a “national champion.” Nobody likes a tie, it seems - that's the reason for the NCAA's overtime rules. While we're at it, let's take the technology of today to help make the game more fair for the kids who are playing their hearts out Saturday after Saturday.