Reliance on video review not good for sports world

The last thing the NHL, or any other professional league, needs right now is more instant replay.

At a time when we don’t necessarily know what a goal is, what’s a ball and a strike, what’s a foul in the NBA or what constitutes a catch in the NFL, the NHL is looking to add more opportunities for video review challenges.

When instant replay was introduced in North American pro sports — to get the calls right, remember — it wasn’t thoroughly thought out or examined. The intent was not to turn games into lengthy breakdowns of milliseconds of inconclusive replays.

Games in hockey and goals are now being determined regularly by computer geeks sitting in their offices away from the ice and finding reasons to challenge offside calls.

Instant replay was supposed to rid the game of obvious mistakes. But instead, goaltender interference, determining what exactly is a goal and the picayune nature of the offside regulations have stolen from the game and made it worse.

You need a glossary today to understand what kind of calls can be challenged and not challenged in the NFL. Some coaches don’t seem to know the rules.

Baseball begins another season, this one with 12 cameras now installed in every stadium for instant replay with the sport investing $50 million on getting calls correct when at the same time it’s doing nothing about inconsistent umpires who have trouble calling balls and strikes.

The intent of instant replay has always been fine. It’s what’s happened in the interim that hasn’t been. Now every team in every league has broken down the rules to such minute detail that they’ve made the games worse, the arguments more, with the sports somewhat defeating themselves.

Adding more replay in baseball and hockey won’t make games better. It will mean we will talk more about technology and less about the players and what they do on the field.