SPORTS: THE NEXT DECADE : MACHINES : One Eye Is Replacing Two : SOME WONDER WHO JOHN McENROE IS GOING TO YELL AT IF THERE ARE NO OFFICIALS? : ACCUTRACK HAS PHASED OUT A FOND RELIC OF THE SPORT: STOPWATCHES.

Technology has been applied in sports most often to benefit athletes.

And why not? Machines are increasingly responsible for the gains made in the last decade by athletes, who now have access to computerized weight-training devices and wind tunnels in which to ride their bicycles.

But machines also are used to govern and judge sport. Some believe this area will yield the greatest sports breakthroughs of the next decade.

Here, then, is a brief look at technology as it is applied in some sports, and projections for the future for others.

Instant Replay, or: Just a Second . . . Hang On . . . Let’s See That From Another Angle

Who would have guessed that one of the most significant innovations in professional football would entail a gang of men clustering around a television set, intently watching something they had already seen.

Instant replay has been an experiment in the NFL since it was approved in 1986. It has survived tenuously on a year-to-year basis since then.

Its institution was born out of the agonizingly close calls, foot-on-the-line touchdowns and flat-out missed infractions that persuaded league owners to approve the use of video replays to review controversial or close calls by officials on the field.

As it is used, a replay official--the league has 16--calls for a play to be reviewed. Using a television feed, officials review the play and either confirm or reverse the on-field official’s call.

The use of the replay was approved on the strength of two of its strongest advocates--Commissioner Pete Rozelle and Dallas Cowboy General Manager Tex Schramm. Schramm’s advocacy was so great that he has been called the godfather of replay. Rozelle was a staunch supporter, guiding the decision through its rocky early stages.

Now both men are out of the NFL, and the future of instant replay is in doubt. Put another way, the NFL may have to look at the situation again.

Replays have proved to be costly and--most irritating--time consuming. And the replay has many times provided controversy of its own.

It appears clear that the use of instant replay for this season was about to go the way of other well-meant innovations. With Rozelle out, and new Commissioner Paul Tagliabue lukewarm on the concept, the NFL may choose not to play it again.

But if the NFL is losing interest in instant replay, at least two other groups are investigating it. The National Hockey League has decided to experiment with instant replay during the next exhibition season. If, after the tryout, the league goes ahead with the plan, instant replays likely will be instituted for the playoffs of the 1990-91 season.

The replay will be used only to determine if the puck crossed the goal line, often a difficult assessment to make in such a fast-moving sport. Hockey is plugging along as it always has, with an official stationed in a glass booth behind the net. The official watches the play and, if he determines a goal has been scored, activates a red flashing light.

The NHL uses video replays to determine who scored a goal or assisted.

For the NHL experiment, teams will not be able to request replays. That decision will be made only by the referee. Once requested, the replay will be made by a supervisor of officials, who will watch the replay on a monitor from the press box. Already league officials have expressed a concern about the time it takes to make decisions.

“Our decision-making certainly has to be under five minutes,” said General Manager Bob Pulford of the Chicago Blackhawks “It should be done in three, four minutes tops. We don’t want any major holdups.”

College football has flirted with the idea of using replays but has resisted.Again, time and cost are high considerations. Also, the college game is fraught with tradition and use of replays may be viewed as a crass interloper.

The Cyclops, or: Beeeep. Excuse Me, Mr. McEnroe, Your Serve Was Long

Tennis has experimented with mechanical alternatives to linesmen. No one is 100% happy with the electronic line-calling system, which still has bugs. But some players have longed to see linesmen absent from matches.

One such system is called Accu-Call. First used in competition in January of 1988, the system was developed after 10 years of research and at a cost of $2.5 million.

Accu-Call uses an electronically charged line that determines in and out balls that land within two feet of the line. Beyond two feet, the umpire makes the call.

The system uses a ball with electronic circuitry woven into its fabric. The manufacturer claims lines can be called to within one-thousandth of an inch.

Then there is the British system, Cyclops. Used in all Grand Slam tournaments, the system uses two rays of light covering a band 20 inches wide. If the ball breaks the light ray outside the service line, it is ruled out and an electronic peep is sounded.

Cyclops is used only to call service lines and only in singles. The light beam can’t distinguish between a ball, foot or racket breaking the beam. So, it can’t be used to call all lines.

And, one wonders who John McEnroe is going to yell at if there are no officials? And who would pay to watch?

Electronic Scoring in Fencing, or: Touch Me There And You’ve Had It

Fencing may have been the first sport to gear up electrically. Equipment manufacturers at the turn of the century began to offer battery-operated foils and sabers for training to alert the novice with a beep when a touch was scored.

The system was first used in the Olympic Games in 1936, in men’s epee. By 1956, it had been allowed in the men’s and women’s foil.

Not surprisingly in such a formal, traditional sport, there was an outcry against these devices.

“There were some people who said, ‘That’s it! I’ll never fence again,’ ” said Dan DeChaine, chairman of the U.S. Fencing Assn.’s technical commission and member of the international federation’s commission for electronic scoring, installations and materials.

DeChaine said there were some protests because the implements were heavy and unwieldy. Officials prevailed because of problems caused by subjective judging.

“In order to salvage the sport, we went to this,” he said. “There was nothing blatant, but an awful lot of arguing. Politics were a big part of it.”

Electronic scoring in fencing is fairly simple. There is a switch on the end of the weapon, which, if pressed hard enough, registers a touch. The switch is fixed with a calibrated spring and plugged into a scoring machine that records touches. Most touches wins.

“The machine has no politics,” DeChaine said.

Still, there is a human element. A president of the jury is in charge of the bout. Like a referee in boxing, he starts and stops the bout and watches for certain things. For example, if a fencer is attempting to touch an opponent and misses and hits the floor, the official ensures that no touch is scored even though one may register electronically.

DeChaine says the system has worked “marvelously well,” but there are ways to beat it.

The sport experimented with a wireless scoring system for a time, but soon found people in the stands with little black boxes, busily punching in their own scores. The rules now say that the fencer must be connected to a scoring box in a completely closed system.

Fencing suffered its darkest moment at the 1976 Olympics when a Soviet pentathlete was caught with a switch built into the grip of his epee. He needed only to press his finger on the handle to score a touch.

“It was embarrassing to all of us in the sport,” DeChaine said. “We were outraged that someone, a world champion, would do something like that. I heard he wound up driving a taxi in Kiev.”

Electronic, Computerized Judging In Boxing, or: Switched On Box

Next to gymnastics and diving, what sport has had more judging controversies than boxing? Some boxing decisions make one wonder if the judges saw the same bout as everyone else.

The Seoul Olympics featured what was perhaps the most wild and unpredictable competition in the history of boxing. Some purely political decisions were made and most observers agreed that boxing--in an ironic metaphor--had given itself a black eye.

Officials in the sport were told that politics had to be taken out of judging. Thus, for the first time, an electronic scoring system was used in this year’s World Championships.

Judges sat before a computer keyboard and registered each scoring blow when it happened. Information was transferred to a video screen, showing the scoring blow and which judge had registered it. For a blow to count, three of five judges had to register it.

The system is more precise, linking a point directly with the blow, and also holds judges more accountable.

With a videotaped history of each bout, protests are more easily handled. And monitors show the judges scoring at the boxing jury’s table, so there is constant review of the scoring status of each bout.

According to Jim Fox, executive director of the U.S. Amateur Boxing Federation, the system was implemented with some difficulty.

“It is a major issue, getting the coaches and federations to realize that this is the way they have to go,” he said. “The issue is that by moving in these directions, we may bring rhyme and reason to the sport where the general public can understand what’s going on. Seoul was a major factor in the scoring machine.”

Track and Field, the NBA and everybody else, or: Plug Me In, Coach

Jim Terrill was the meet director for the three years of the International Track Assn. This professional track circuit was around from 1973 to 1976 and was responsible for not only some of the most blatantly gaudy gimmicks, but also technological innovations ahead of their time.

The ITA would do nearly anything in the name of promotion.

With that in mind, Terrill brought in pacing lights, a system of lights designed for training. The ITA rightly guessed they would made great theater.

A string of large light bulbs, encased in plastic, was placed around the inside of the track. Time was programmed into the device and lights “ran” at that pace.

The lights were synchronized with the electronic starting device and would blink in succession around the track, operating as a kind of “rabbit.” The concept, was either “extremely effective or devastatingly bad,” Terrill said.

“It’s extremely exciting for the crowd, if the runners are equal to the lights,” he said. “We had some real dog races, then, however. We would set the lights at a certain pace and the lights would actually lap the athletes. Then I would be accused of turning off the lights, which, of course, I did.”

Even renegade outfits have pride.

It may be that track and field utilizes more equipment than most sports. Devices start races, record the finish, time and measure.

A machine, the Accutrack, phased out a fond relic of the sport: A pack of men in dark suits and hats, bunched together, peering at stopwatches.

Now hand timers are used as backups. The starter’s gun is wired to the timing system and automatically starts the race “clock.” The order of finish is determined by a photograph.

Field events are effected, too. Officials no longer rush out after the javelin lands, pulling a 300-foot tape measure. Now throws and horizontal jumps are measured by a surveyor’s transit or triangulation.

In triangulation, a scorer sights where the implement was released and where it landed. Using his position as the third leg of a triangle, the scorer, or his computer, calculates the distance the discus, for example, has traveled.

These systems in no way eliminate the human element--or cheating, for that matter. But within their limits they are precise.

One can foresee using a pressure pad embedded in a long jump or triple jump take-off board to call fouls. Or a beam of light instead of a crossbar in the high jump or pole vault.

Terrill believes that we could transfer technology from one sport to another. The NFL could use a photo-finish device to detect whether the football breaks the plane of the goal line.

Or perhaps offensive players could wear sensors, much like clothes tags in department stores, that would trigger an alarm once they enter the end zone.

In the NBA, a sensor could be implanted at the three-point line to determine if a shooter was on the line, behind it or over it. The trick would be to develop a sensor that would not also record everyone else on the floor who was stepping on the line at the same time.

Why couldn’t baseball use laser technology to project a batter’s box and strike zone?

Dog racing’s use of technology has put rabbits on the bread (carrot?) line. Live rabbits once lured greyhounds around the track, but now there is a mechanical rabbit, or lure, that emits an electronic noise. This can best be described as a squeak.

Normally this system works quite well. But human control can breed human error. There have been cases of dogs overtaking the lure and attacking the squeaking metal rabbit. When this happens it is called a mechanical failure and all money is refunded.

Auto racing has been on the replay bandwagon. In the 1981 Indianapolis 500, video replays showed that Bobby Unser passed slower cars during a caution period. Officials penalized Unser a lap, making Mario Andretti the winner. The call was later reversed, but the replay can of worms had been opened. Replays are still used in auto racing to review protests.

Yachting is talking about starting races with a video camera positioned at the starting line with an imaginary line drawn through the screen and real time projected on image as a way of measuring who may have false-started and when. Since most sailboat races start with one or two boats over the line, this may catch many cheaters.

But don’t forget to factor in human nature. For every technological breakthrough that may make sports and games more nearly fair, there is sure to be someone with a device designed to thwart it.

Said Andy Kostanecki, chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s panel on Sports Equipment and Technology, “One thing you can always say is the technology is always ahead of the politics. Then politics catches up.”