PRO FOOTBALL : Memo to NFL: Bring Back Replay Rulings

The National Football League probably thinks it has seen the last of the arguments supporting the reinstituting of instant replay, considering the lack of controversy in the two years since the system was abandoned.

But if any NFL executive who voted against replay was watching Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals between the New York Rangers and Vancouver Canucks--or even the subsequent drama of Game 7--he should have been thinking long and hard about giving the idea another chance. In a hurry.

Just imagine a National Hockey League without instant replay for a moment, and you’ll realize there might never have been the spectacle of that winner-take-all match in New York.

Without replay, Vancouver winger Geoff Courtnall’s goal with 1:32 remaining in the third period of Game 6 would not have counted, and Mark Messier’s subsequent goal with less than a minute to go would have been allowed and brought the Rangers to a one-goal deficit.

Instead, replay correctly established that Courtnall’s shot had gone into the net, and Messier’s goal was taken off the board. The result: a 4-1 Vancouver lead and the assurance of a Game 7. The result without replay: Messier’s goal stands, the Rangers get a chance to tie it in the final minute to send the game into overtime and perhaps win a Stanley Cup tainted by a blown call.

The Rangers wound up winning the Cup, but they won it fair and square, not with the help of a bad officiating call.

So we ask you this: Can you think of a better argument to bring replay back to the NFL, which now has no mechanism for correcting a potentially championship-sized mistake by an official? Of course not.

NFL replay should never have been overturned in the first place at the 1992 spring owners meetings, where discontent over the inner workings of the system ultimately killed the 6-year-old experiment.

Yes, there were long delays and an inability to master the technical aspects of the system. And, yes, instant replay should have been viewed more as a useful means of ensuring the proper call on a given play, not the Big Brother menace it came to represent to some NFL referees and team executives.

But instead of simply giving up on replay--a concept that remains popular with many fans--the owners should continue investigating ways to improve the system and bring it back as soon as possible.

They can start by taking a page out of the NHL rule book: Reduce the scope of replay to review only the most crucial plays in a game. Hockey’s replay doesn’t overrule such judgment calls as penalties and offsides, and an NFL replay system should adopt a similar approach. If the NFL limited replay to all scoring plays and turnovers, the entire process wouldn’t get bogged down in determining whether a receiver had his little toe inbounds on a five-yard catch at midfield or whether the quarterback was an inch over the line of scrimmage when delivering a pass.

We’ll grant you things have gone relatively smoothly in the two years since replay was abandoned. Hey, even the replay-meister himself, Dan Dierdorf, was pretty quiet on Monday nights. But that shouldn’t leave NFL executives complacent about what’s ahead.

“I think the league has been pretty fortunate the last two years,” says former Dallas Cowboys president Tex Schramm, who was the major force behind instituting replay in 1986. “But you can just as easily have two years coming up where you have a whole bunch of (controversial) plays that are very pivotal in games.”