Home-Screen Advantage

As NFL topics go, it’s a big-picture issue, about 30 feet tall and 100 feet wide.

It’s the Jumbotron, or any giant video board inside an NFL stadium, and there’s a brewing controversy regarding how it’s used, particularly when it comes to the league’s instant-replay system.

The league doesn’t control what’s shown on the big screen when there’s a questionable call. That decision is made by the stadium-operations employee who controls the video board. So, if there’s a replay that might help one of the coaches decide whether to challenge a call, it’s someone from the home venue, and often an employee of the team, who decides whether to cue up a play.

In a league so concerned with parity, the system tips the scales.

Mike Pereira, who oversees NFL officials, acknowledged the system created a home-field advantage because stadium employees understand when it’s advantageous to show replays on the big screen.

“The scoreboard and the Jumbotron are part of the entertainment package for the fans in the stadium,” he said. “I wouldn’t be inclined to think it would change.”

According to Pereira, the system balances itself out because “everybody plays eight games at home, and everybody plays eight games on the road. You really have equal opportunities in this area.”

Every week, it seems, a visiting coach winds up explaining how he might have challenged a close call but didn’t because he had no way to see a replay. A coach has until the ball is snapped on the next play to issue a challenge. Each team has an assistant coach watching for questionable plays and advising the head coach when to challenge, but that system doesn’t always work. The coaches see only what’s shown on the board.

In a loss at Philadelphia, the Minnesota Vikings were burned on a 45-yard touchdown pass to Terrell Owens. The replays clearly showed that Owens’ knee was down a yard short of the end zone, and that he was bobbling the ball until he rolled out of bounds. It probably wasn’t even a catch. The replay, however, wasn’t shown on the video board at Lincoln Financial Field, and the Vikings didn’t challenge.

When asked later why he hadn’t challenged the touchdown call, an agitated Mike Tice, coach of the Vikings, said the coaches in the booth hadn’t seen a replay until after the extra point and kickoff, when it was too late.

“We saw the replay after the kickoff,” he said. “And, sure, we would have challenged it then. I don’t know what you want me to do otherwise. You can second-guess me for not challenging it, but I couldn’t see [the play] down in the corner.”

When Dallas played at Washington, the Redskins got a break on third down. Clinton Portis caught a pass and his knee clearly was down short of a first down. He was allowed to get up, though, and gained 12 yards and the first down. Cowboy Coach Bill Parcells didn’t have an unobstructed view of the blown call, and the Redskins sure weren’t going to help him; the replay was never shown on the big screen.

But in the same game, a questionable interception by Dallas cornerback Pete Hunter was shown repeatedly on the video board, allowing Redskin Coach Joe Gibbs to study the play and decide for himself. He challenged the call, and the interception was reversed.

“I do not believe [the challenge system is] equitable,” Parcells said after the game, a Cowboy victory. “That’s why I don’t like it. That’s OK. What I believe doesn’t make any difference.”

Then again, maybe it does. Rich McKay, general manager of the Atlanta Falcons and co-chairman of the competition committee, agreed with Parcells and said the league would look at the issue next spring.

“When we took the system in, we knew the video boards would be a problem, but we didn’t know how to control it,” McKay said. “We had this fear that when the home team had the call it would get shown 50 times on the board. And when the visiting team had the call you’d see an ad for Coca-Cola.”

After a questionable call that went against the visiting team was shown on the video board in Denver this summer, Bronco Coach Mike Shanahan joked that his team had the friendliest stadium-operations people in the league. He could afford to laugh; it happened in an exhibition game.

“They never show anything on the road, so you know that,” Shanahan said. “You get to see it at home, and you never see it on the road.”

One of the few rules regarding replays and the video board is that once a call is challenged, the only replays that can be shown on the big screen must come off the network feed. The stadium cannot use angles shot by its own photographers, the ones who normally pan the crowd. McKay said the competition committee gave consideration to the league’s augmenting the network’s replays with ones shot by its own photographers but dismissed that as costly and probably ineffective.

“We’re not in that business,” he said, “so who’s to say we’d do it as well?”

Major League Baseball has regulations on what can and cannot be shown on the in-stadium screens. Among the things that cannot be shown are plays at the plate, double plays or force outs originating at second base, or clearly incorrect calls. The rationale is, umpires have a hard enough job without replays working against them.

The NFL does enforce the type and size of monitors the coaches are provided during games. Teams may not bring their own viewing equipment.

“It’s not a perfect system,” McKay said. “It wasn’t designed to be a perfect system. It was one designed to correct the obvious error on the big play. It’s not flawless.”

The quality of the system changes not only from week to week, but from game to game. A rule of thumb: The bigger the game, the better the system.

“If you’re a national game, there are a lot of cameras, a lot of camera angles,” Arizona Coach Dennis Green said. “Notwithstanding the Jumbotron, the coach in the box can make a decision quicker because he has more angles. If you have a game that’s not nationally televised, you might have four cameras, in contrast to 15. So that will affect the look that you get.”

McKay tries to position himself the best way he knows how. He sits in the press box during games, and, when he was general manager of Tampa Bay, he was within 15 yards of the Buccaneer coaches’ box.

“That was by design,” he said, adding that he frequently would run to the box to tell coaches when to challenge, in case they hadn’t already done so.

Things aren’t quite so easy, now that he’s in Atlanta. He doesn’t know the stadium as well, and he doesn’t sit as close to the coaches.

During a recent game, he was trying to get to the coaches’ box to check on a challenge, opened the door to the stairwell and watched it close, and lock, behind him.

“I had to go three floors down just to get out,” he confided. “Of course, I didn’t tell anyone about it.”

And, fortunately for him, it didn’t wind up on the video board.