THE NEW ERA OF SPORTS

I just finished watching the last ten minutes of the Oklahoma versus Kansas State football game—six minutes of play time versus four minutes of dead time for the dispute of an on-field call by a referee.   With less than two minutes to play Oklahoma needed a TD and PA to tie/win (2-point PA) the game.  The referee called an Oklahoma player touched the football during the onside kickoff by Oklahoma before it went the prescribed ten yards, and awarded the football to Kansas State.  The Oklahoma coach protested and called for a video replay.  Time was called and the referee spent two minutes looking at the video replay.  He finally ruled the Oklahoma player did touch the football and signaled Kansas State’s ball. The Oklahoma coach immediately lurched into a two minute verbal protest with the referees.  All the while no play on the field-of-play.  

Baseball isn’t much better.  I watched most of the third game of the World Series (Astros -vs- Nationals) and the close calls were challenged with video replay to settle the challenges.

This is the reason I’m less and less interested to watch sports.  More emphasis is placed on the video replays than the referee’s (umpire’s) call on the field-of-play.  More and more time is taken to decide the outcome of the calls. This not only slows down the game, but takes the human element out of the game.  The game is supposed to be a contest of humans, not video cameras.

I foresee the day when every aspect of the game and field-of play will be covered by numerous video cameras.   Referees and umpires will no longer be needed.  Cameras will record balls and strikes.  A master computer will gather all the play-by-play data from the field- of-play cameras.  A super computer algorithm will make all calls and broadcast the results on a mega-screen.  Spectators  will watch the video screen, thus eliminate the human factor (referees and umpires) from the games.  A look to the future I foresee sports as a huge massive video game.  We're already trending that way.

I yearn for the days I played sports when the players and the game were the most interesting part to watch--not referees, not umpires, not video replays, not argumentative coaches.