COMMENTARY : Instant Replay? Let it RIP

Enough already with Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith and did they or didn’t they. Call it an incomplete pass, call it a fumble, call it a safety, call it inconclusive but definitely don’t call the man in the instant-replay booth. The phone has been disconnected, and if the NFL owners have any sense at all, they will keep it that way in perpetuity.

I’ve done more spinarounds on this issue during the last few years than Darrell Green covering Michael Irvin. As recently as last September, I wrote that ending replay after six years would result in more controversy than it was worth. After being conditioned to expect replays, the viewing public would be outraged if officiating atrocities were no longer corrected, I wrote. But now, after further review and a season that’s been remarkably free of major disputes until last week, I’ve changed my mind again.

Who needs it?

Despite the uproar, the climactic play of last Sunday’s nationally televised Cowboys-Redskins game evoked in both cities, the tumult has not rekindled the simmering debate over instant replays, which were killed for the 1992 season--and maybe forever --after 11 of 28 owners voted against them last March.

Furthermore, interviews this week with owners, general managers and other league officials gathered for Wednesday’s NFL meeting in Dallas indicated that if a vote were held right now, replays would not be approved for the 1993 season. In fact, even more teams would be likely to vote against their return.

No one would be more delighted with that development than Jerry Seeman, the NFL’s director of officiating, who diplomatically says he’ll do anything he’s told by the owners but could easily live without it. “The replay system we had before was driving the game too much,” he said. “The original intent was to use it as a tool to help officiating. I’d like it not to be the driving force.”

Seeman said again on Wednesday the replays he saw on the Aikman play were inconclusive. The on-field ruling of a fumble when Aikman was hit by Redskins lineman Jason Buck most likely would not have been reversed even if replay had been in effect.

“We’ve gone through 15 weeks and almost 200 games and this really is the first major kind of play that affects the outcome of a game that could or could not have been reversed,” Seeman said. “The season has gone very well for us. And even if you had replay on that play and had five replay officials in the booth, three might have reversed it and two others might not have. It was not a black-and-white issue.”

A year ago, play was stopped during NFL games 570 times for replay reviews of up-in-the-air calls. Ninety were reversed by replay officials in the booth, and Seeman said this week that of those, “80 were good, solid reversals.”

Over the years, replays often came under fire because they took an eternity to resolve the controversies, interrupted the natural flow of the game and led to tentative, scared-stiff officiating by crews hesitant to throw flags for fear of being embarrassed by all those eyes in the skies and the network golden-throats criticizing their work.

Without replays and other subtle time-saving measures implemented this season, games have become shorter compared with a year ago. The average time of a game after 14 weeks last season was barely more than three hours. This season after 14 weeks it’s 2:58, even after the NFL added another two-minute commercial break for the networks. Last season, the delay for replays averaged about two minutes, according to the league, although five- to 10-minute delays seemed common.

Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones, who once supported replays, was one of several swing votes that finally killed it last year. Whatever else Redskin fans think of the Cowboys and their chatty chief cheerleader, no one could dispute the class he demonstrated last Sunday in the locker room when he said the replays he saw in his private box on the Aikman dispute were inconclusive. Without prompting, he added that he had no regrets about his replay vote and would do it again, even if he was, and remains, “sick over the call.”

On Wednesday, he repeated those sentiments. Though he said further study of the play indicated to him that Aikman “definitely was pulling the ball back; you couldn’t really tell when the ball came out. It was still inconclusive.”

Jones also said another review of the game tape indicated a punt that hit Cowboy return man Kelvin Martin, ruled a fumble, touched Redskin Johnny Thomas first. If that was the case and had been properly called, the Cowboys would have retained the ball where it struck Thomas. Instead, the Redskins got it, and immediately scored on Earnest Byner’s 41-yard option pass to Terry Orr.

Still, Jones maintained he will keep his mind open on replays until he sees the results of the NFL’s season-long experiments before casting his vote in March. Ironically, one of those experiments was held at RFK last Sunday to see if decisions in the replay booth could be made in a minute or less. Seeman insisted the Aikman play could have been reviewed that quickly, but that seems a stretch.

“I’m not gonna put on my Cowboy shoes when I vote,” Jones said. “I’m open-minded, but right now I’m still against it. When you use it, you delay the game, you add to the controversy. . . . “

Clearly, it’s still a subject to review. But the owners would be wise to do the right thing and forget about replay, in the best interests of their game.