NFL MEETINGS : Further Review Might Mean the End of Replays

Some of the more prominent delegates to the NFL’s annual convention lobbied forcefully Sunday against a continuance of instant-replay officiating.

“It has proven to be too difficult to manage,” said Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs. “All those TV timeouts disrupt the game. There’s been one series of problems after another.”

Before Hunt and other club owners vote this week on whether to extend replay officiating another year, they will confront the fact that a majority of those on the competition committee are against the idea.

“(Replay officiating) is getting worse, instead of better,” said Bill Polian, general manager of the Buffalo Bills, who is on the competition committee.

Said Mike McCaskey of the Chicago Bears: “We’ll proudly cast a ‘no’ vote.”

Those planning to vote ‘yes’ point to what they call the play that saved instant replay: Philadelphia cornerback Ben Smith’s 94-yard run to a touchdown that was disallowed last winter when reruns proved that Washington ballcarrier Earnest Byner was down before he fumbled.

“(That) play knocked us out of the playoffs,” Philadelphia owner Norman Braman said. “I don’t question the call--except it was an (illegal) call. It took more than the allowed two minutes.”

The future is worrying replay partisans.

The NFL has decided to hire a vice president of labor relations to help move the owners closer to Commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s priority goal: peace with the Players Assn.

In a companion move, Tagliabue has slightly liberalized the group that deals with the players, the Management Council’s ultra-conservative executive committee.

Executive director Jack Donlan, a hard-liner, is out, and Tagliabue has brought in a moderate and a conservative to replace two committee conservatives, Hugh Culverhouse of Tampa Bay and Billy Bidwill of Phoenix.

The moderate is Pat Bowlen of Denver. The new conservative, John Cooke of Washington, will join with holdover committee members Wellington Mara of the New York Giants and Mike Brown of Cincinnati to give the old guard a 50-50 voice.

In NFL voting, Bowlen and the other holdover members, John Shaw of the Rams and Dan Rooney of Pittsburgh, sometimes oppose the league’s hard-liners.

NFL Notes

After the 27 other clubs approved New York financier Bob Tisch as co-owner--and co-executive officer--of the New York Giants, Tisch, 64, said: “What I want now is 10 years of fun.” . . . The competition committee voted unanimously to throw out the grasp-and-control rule and restore the old rule, which allows quarterbacks to fight their way out of trouble if they can.