A perfect tool or a Pandora’s Box?
Upon further review, examining videos has solved some problems and created many others
When the NFL first introduced the concept in, yikes, the mid-’80s, video review was seen as cutting-edge technology that would drag the game into the modern era while all but eliminating game-changing officiating errors.
And maybe, it has. To a degree. But a random sampling of recent stories on the sports schedule reveals that, 30 years later, the NFL didn’t create the perfect tool so much as it opened a Pandora’s Box. The NHL, which believed in opening goalie interference to appeal, is currently wrestling with a massive headache on the eve of its playoffs. In MLS, Whitecaps fans are still incensed over a five-minute video review that led to the expulsion of captain Kendall Waston from Saturday’s game in Atlanta and a penalty goal for the home side.
As for the NFL, we have neither the time nor the space to adequately discuss the confusion and inconsistency created over the seemingly simple act of catching the ball.
Yes, upon further review, video has solved a few problems while creating a boat-load of others, not the least of which is an enduring frustration among the paying customer. It reveals much about the problem, in fact, that last year the CFL and newly minted commissioner Randy Ambrosie succeeded in reducing its scope by, zounds, reducing the number of challenges.
On Wednesday, the league will also revisit this issue for the umpteenth time at its annual fan-fest thingy in Winnipeg.
If you’re nervous, you have every right to be.
“I believe it had the effect (Ambrosie) wanted because it eliminated a lot of the cheesy, fishing challenges the coach had the right to make but was affecting the game way too much,” said Lions head coach Wally Buono, a longtime member of the CFL rules committee. “The way it is right now, I can live with it.”
Over to you Ed Hervey.
“The fact that we’re always trying to seek perfection is doing more harm than good,” the Lions’ general manager said. “I think there’s still
a place for the element of human error.”
Interesting that it’s come back to that.
The CFL, as you may be aware, has a complex history with video review and has changed course a number of times over the matter. But a month into the job, Ambrosie looked at the existing system — coaches were allowed two challenges per game and a third if they were successful on the first two — its impact on the game’s flow and entertainment value, and concluded this is nuts.
Without a lot of dialogue or committee meetings, Ambrosie unilaterally changed the rules, allowing coaches one challenge per game, period. They also had to have a timeout to execute that challenge. With that one move, Ambrosie allbut eliminated those fishing expeditions — challenges made not on merit, but in the hope that a call
(usually to do with illegal contact) would fall the way of the team in question — and eliminated a number of headaches for the league.
It also secured Ambrosie’s reputation as a clear-thinking progressive.
“We had a Pandora’s Box before Randy closed it,” Buono said. “What he’s accomplished in a year, some guys haven’t accomplished in eight years.”
But this isn’t over because it never seems to be over with video review. The league will be looking at a number of rule revisions this week, including several that fall under the area of player safety. It’s expected the number of players allowed in a wedge on kickoff returns will be limited to two. It’s also expected any attempt at a running jump to block a field goal will be made illegal. And there will be language about receivers and blind-side blocks.
As for video review, well, that’s an
interesting one. Ambrosie has established a less-is-more policy. At one point last season, he said: “If we can’t find the right way to use video replay then all options should be on the table, including not using it at all.”
But the talking point in Winnipeg will be more active participation from the command centre at league headquarters, including penalty reviews. Again the goal is to eliminate the egregious error, the game-changing call. But we’ve also seen where that can lead.
The NHL, for example, thought it was doing the game a great service when it opened up goalie interference to challenge. Commissioner Gary Bettman, of all people, reportedly laid out the potential problem that would create and asked the GMs: Are you sure you want to go down this road?
Apparently, they weren’t. On Tuesday,
the league announced The Situation Room will take over the final decisions on goalie interference instead of the collaboration between on-ice officials and the war room that currently exists. In other news, the league will not be reviewing that goofy, foot-in-the-air offside rule that drives fans crazy. So there’s that.
“It has to be consistent,” Hervey says of the abiding principle for review. “Whether it’s one person (in the pool of reviewers) or two or three or five, they have to see the same play the same way.
“Pass interference has to be the same thing for Reviewer 1 as for Reviewer 5. If they see it differently from week to week or game to game, that creates the level of inconsistency which frustrates the football people, the players and the fans.”
Sounds simple enough. We’ve come to know it’s anything but.