Play It Again, NFL : However, There Could Be Drawbacks to Playbacks

Jim Tunney, the veteran National Football League referee, calls himself a team player. “My country right or wrong,” he said the other day, making an obvious reference not to a country but to an organization that circulates more money than many countries.

And, using that logic, he said he endorses instant replay for officials--but only because the NFL has decided to use it this season.

At the same time, Tunney said, he has been alarmed by the potential for new kinds of problems at NFL games when the deciding arbiter is a TV instrument.

He identified the following as some of the problem areas:

--The most controversial plays of any game will be hard to judge in the required 20 seconds. Although a press-box official will be working with two instant-replay recorders, it takes time to review a tough call.

--Stadium fans, who seem to be getting more unruly each year, will be even more difficult to handle now if instant

replay costs the home team a touchdown when a call is reversed in a close game.

--Based on experiments made so far, a losing team and its fans lack faith, anyway, in instant-replay decisions. Partisans see what they want to see.

--Most serious, and most important, the present two-dimensional TV camera is inadequate for the job.

Tunney, who has opposed instant replay in officiating for many years, is a former Occidental basketball player and high school principal who has a doctorate in education from USC.

President-elect of the National Speakers Assn., he is an internationally known lecturer on motivation and the power of mental attitude. His office is in Lakewood.

Tunney, who has been the referee in three Super Bowls, said the flaw in instant replay is that “the camera lacks 3-D accuracy.”

Question: Is this a critical deficiency?

Answer: Yes, it can be critical on many plays. The difference between cameras and people is that the human eye has depth perception. That’s the missing dimension in a TV picture.

Q: How often is depth perception vital in officiating?

A: Much of the time. You can only rely on a TV picture for two dimensions--height and width--but on many calls, depth is the decisive dimension.

Q: On what sort of calls is it decisive?

A: It can be the main factor on fumbles, interceptions, sideline plays and many others. I trust that you’ll make clear that I’m not criticizing the league for making this one-year (instant replay) experiment. If the (28 NFL) owners want it, I’m for it--and I’ll do everything I can to make it work smoothly. But it isn’t true, for example, that a fumble is a fumble.

Q: When is a fumble not a fumble?

A: It isn’t a fumble if the man’s knee hits the ground before he loses the ball. And that’s where the TV camera has trouble. From certain angles, TV doesn’t have the depth perception to be sure whether the knee is on the ground or six inches above the ground.

Q: Six inches?

A: Yes, six or eight or more. That is, you can’t be sure . It’s the same when there is a presumption of illegal contact on an interception. From certain camera angles, it can appear that two people have bumped together when they’re as much as a foot apart.

Q: Should we think of the camera as an outright liar?

A: From certain angles, yes. The Hollywood people have proven this for years. The illusion that is the magic of Hollywood is very often nothing more than a good camera angle, or a bad camera angle. Have you ever seen a man get beaten up in a movie?

Q: Not since last night.

A: The blow that knocked him out probably missed his chin by at least two inches. It was the makeup man, not the good guy, who bloodied the bad guy’s eye. They tell me that a clever Hollywood cameraman can make it look like you’ve been hit squarely in the eye when the other guy misses by 12 inches.

Q: Are you saying it’s the same with instant replay?

A: I’m saying it can be the same, from certain angles. The NFL found this out years ago in its reviews of game films. Our supervisor of officials, Art McNally, and his staff have reviewed every play in every game for 20 years. And when they show a film to us (officials), there are dozens of plays when you can’t be sure until you’ve seen all the angles.

Q: During the week after a game, does McNally ever sustain a referee’s decision that was seemingly overruled by a TV commentator on Sunday?

A: It happens right along. The one I’ll never forget was the play in Super Bowl XII when Roger Staubach scrambled out and threw a touchdown pass. I ruled (Staubach) out of bounds and called the play back. However, from a direct overhead TV angle, he was clearly in bounds, and the fans at home thought I’d made a mistake. If we’d had an instant-replay official that year, the Staubach touchdown might have been allowed. But on Thursday (after the game), reviewing the game film, McNally saw that Roger had stepped out of bounds and back in before the throw.

Q: Thursday may be early enough for McNally, but not for the Sunday bunch.

A: That’s right. On Sundays, the NFL is hoping for a definite instant-replay interpretation in 20 seconds. Sometimes that will be sufficient. More often, it won’t.

Q: When will 20 seconds be enough?

A: It will be enough to detect a simple mid-air fumble or a play when a receiver comes down on one foot with most of his foot on the sideline.

Q: When will 20 seconds be insufficient?

A: A TV play can be called up on a videocassette recorder in 5 to 7 seconds. That leaves 13 to 15 seconds for a review. You might or might not be able to run through a complicated disputed play a couple of times in 15 seconds. Anytime you have to see a play from beginning to end, you’re in trouble time-wise. If you need another angle or two to be sure on an out-of-bounds play or any possession-type play, you’ll usually have to say it’s too close to call.

Q: Suppose a call is reversed against the home team after an instant-replay review. Will the players, coaches and fans gracefully accept it?

A: That remains to be seen. The exact language hasn’t been worked out yet, but the referee will have to go to a microphone and say something like this: “Instant replay has shown that the receiver was out of bounds that time.” I don’t know how that will play in Denver or Philadelphia if it was the winning touchdown pass.

Q: Instant replays have been run on stadium screens for several years in some cities. How do the fans react when a call goes against their team?

A: One problem is that the action on a large-scale stadium TV screen isn’t as clear as it is on a small TV receiver in the press box. Stadium fans don’t believe the evidence of a fuzzy screen if it’s unfavorable to them. In fact, the fans of a team that is losing a close game just don’t see what other people see.

Q: There may be a difference of interpretation between partisan fans--but at least they can’t say: “The TV made a mistake.” The way things are today, the NFL thinks it hurts football when fans point to TV and say: “The referee made a mistake.”

A: Sometimes people are right when they say that. Referees do make mistakes. So do coaches and players. So do fans. Do you know anyone who doesn’t? Life is a game of mistakes. And so is football, which is a game for humans--not machines. The problem with electronic officiating is that it’s electronic--not human.

Q: You’d rather see mistakes?

A: Well, turnovers, for example, are what make football exciting--and a turnover is by definition a mistake. This is a humans’ game, and the officials are part of that.

Q: But don’t officials make too many mistakes?

A: One mistake can be too many. The fact is, though, that NFL officials have pushed their accuracy level up to 96 or 97% in recent years. I suspect that that’s about as high as you ordinarily get in any profession.

Q: Still, there’s a general feeling that football officiating has been getting worse.

A: It’s getting better, not worse, and we can document that. What’s happened is that coaches, players and fans are getting more knowledgeable on the rules all the time. They see (officiating) mistakes they didn’t used to see. Coaches who weren’t aware of some of the more obscure rules are awakened when a call goes against them, and now they watch for it.

Q: Would there be less demand for instant replay if the NFL had full-time officials?

A: I doubt it. The (umpire’s) call that helped Kansas City beat St. Louis in the World Series last fall was made by a full-time umpire (Don Denkinger). You don’t eliminate errors with full-time officials.

Q: But you might catch some errors with instant replay. The Super Bowl officiating crew blew a call on the sideline this winter when a New England receiver came down with the ball.

A: That call was an example of one that might have been changed if we’d had a backup TV capability in that game. Some of the more obvious officiating mistakes can be rectified by instant replay.

Q: Isn’t that all the NFL is trying to do?

A: Yes, and that’s why I said it’s an experiment worth trying. The thing that concerns some of us is that we might be creating as many problems as we solve. That’s what I told an angry letter writer after the Super Bowl.

Q: What was his complaint?

A: He asked me: “How can I teach my 10-year-old son about fairness, honesty and accuracy when you referees keep making these miserable mistakes?”

I told him: “You shouldn’t be teaching your son that things are fair, honest and exact in this world. Teach him to bounce back when things go wrong.” That’s the real lesson of football.