He Didn’t Need to See It Again

During the first quarter of Super Bowl XXVI, the Washington Redskins’ Art Monk caught a touchdown pass in the end zone, putting his team ahead, 6-0.

It didn’t count. They have this little machine up in the far reaches of the stadium. It’s a little snitch. It has no resiliency. It caught the action.

It revealed that Art Monk’s big toe on one foot was on the out-of-bounds line! Big infraction! No touchdown!

Now, keep in mind that Art really got no advantage, fair or unfair, from his big toe being stretched an inch or so across the back line.

How farcical! Technology gone mad. Art Monk scored a touchdown. He’s entitled to have it in his records. Fortunately, the incident didn’t affect the outcome of the game. But it could have. The record shows that Washington fumbled on the very next play and didn’t score on that drive. The score remained 0-0. It could have disheartened the Redskins.

I feel like throwing my hat in the air at the news that pro football had done away with instant-replay officiating. Big toes out of bounds are not my idea of reversible infractions.

The fact that they are--or were--I blame on our Anglo-Saxon heritage. Any study of English history shows that a love of nit-picking law is built into the lineage. It carries over into our system of jurisprudence. One toe out of bounds there and there goes that whole case, too.

The intrusion of machines into games people play has always nauseated me. Where does it end? Do we suit up two lineups of computers, hand them a game plan and retire to our television sets?

Look, if a call is controversial enough to go to instant replay, the chances are it isn’t clear cut either way. It’s a borderline decision.

Machines have no place in sport. It’s not Nintendo, after all. It’s a game played by live people. It should be officiated by live people.

What’s next? Do we have a huge Big Brother behind home plate overruling an umpire? (“I call ‘em as I see ‘em.”) Does it spit out data: “That last pitch was 1/18th of an inch outside the putative strike zone!” Gimme a break!

Look! Football already has, what, seven officials on the field? There are so many, they’re constantly being bumped into or upended by players. There is a referee, umpire, head linesman, line judge, back judge, side judge, field judge.

That should be plenty to regulate a game. Lord knows, they already interrupt it enough to make you want to bite the goal posts.

Only a few years ago, when football was going to try out its act on the British, they played an otherwise meaningless game in London’s Wembley Stadium. I could have choked the zebras. Here we were, trying to show the Brits what a fast-paced, exciting game our football was, and the striped shirts kept stopping it to have grave, long-faced conferences at midfield. It was about as exciting as a Geneva Conference. It was merely a lousy exhibition game, but the refs and umps and judges acted as if it were for the NFC championship. I felt like screaming, “Let them play!”

Instant replay broke off the action 570 times last season. The instant-replay officials reversed 90 calls. Those are records. Reliance on replay was becoming greater and greater each season. It was determined later that about 12 of those reversals were in error. In other words, the machine can make mistakes, too. (Art Monk’s big toe was ruled a proper call.)

My view of nit-picking in officiating any game is well known. It’s not the intent of rules. When a batter is fooled on a pitch enough to start to swing at it, only to realize, too late, that it’s a curveball, it should be a strike. Regardless of whether he “broke his wrists,” or not. In my sandlot days, if the bat left your shoulder and you didn’t hit the ball, it was a strike, baby. Period.

I have never come to terms with “the ground caused the fumble,” either. In my day, you either held onto the ball or you didn’t. Of course, the ground caused the fumble. That’s why we threw the ballcarrier on it.

But, the ultimate indignity is having a machine decide the ground caused the fumble.

Big Brother was getting ever more aggressive. During the six years of instant replay, the rate of reversal was about 10%--370 in more than 3,000. Last year, it was 15%. Trust me, it would have grown.

Other sports pretty much let the players play and the umps or refs call it. As near as I can tell, they never even call traveling in basketball anymore. The various electronic devices to make line calls in tennis haven’t cut down on the tantrums. And they appear pretty much as erratic as humans.

But I don’t want a machine some day to tell me, “He broke the plane of the goal line,” (whatever that is) when a player gets hurled back by a defensive line. Either bull into that end zone and plant the ball down or start all over again.

We don’t need any stinkin’ machines, guys. If you want machine football, go to an arcade. We want people football.