Home Trip Captain Traditions & Pageantry Features What is AutumnSpectacle.com? Store Contact Us |
| If We Were
Czar: Instant Replay By AutumnSpectacle.com staff E-mail For three full seasons, AutumnSpectacle.com has celebrated the college football experience in a manner that is unique among the media: We’ve avoided the negative and it’s the reason why our loyal readers come back to us. That being said, there are a few things that we feel should be changed with This time, we tackle instant replay. College football’s instant replay should, without question, be conducted the way they do it in the NFL. It’s rare that we would ever say such a thing but in this case, the pro game is vastly superior. Let’s ponder two scenarios that capture the shortfall of the replay system. It’s first and goal at the 2-yard line when a powerful tailback goes off tackle and into a pile. The officials can’t tell if the ball crossed the goal line because of the mass of humanity mashing against each other. When the dust clears, the officials make a call… Whether the refs ruled a touchdown or not is irrelevant here. Why? Because you can guarantee that play will be stopped and we’ll all lose patience watching the different angles to see if the guy got in. The next scenario looks like this. The offense faces 2nd & 9 at their own 32 when the QB completes a three-yard pass that may or may not truly have been complete. When the initial replay is shown, it’s unclear as to whether the nose of the ball hit the ground or if the receiver got his hands under the ball. No matter. The “genius” eye in the sky stops play to look at the play from every angle except the receiver’s helmet cam. Four minutes go by when the ref pulls off the headphones and announces that the call on the field stands. The result? It’s now 3rd & 6 instead of 3rd & 9. Wow! That’s progress, right? AutumnSpectacle.com would be completely fine with going back to the way it was for over a century. No replay. The refs make the call and the call is final. Now, get back in the huddle and let’s play. But, we understand that will never happen and continuing this system makes us bleed from the eyeballs. So, we offer a solution. The NFL system puts the decision on the coach. In both of the aforementioned scenarios, the coach of the defensive team never ever would’ve wasted his challenge on plays that would have little impact on the game. If he challenges scenario A and wins, there’s still a real good chance that the QB will score on a sneak from the 3-inch line on the next play anyway. He’d save his challenge for a bigger play later on. If he challenges scenario B and wins, the offense is just as likely to convert on third down whether they need six or nine yards. Again, he’d save his challenge for a bigger play later on. In the college system, these are common stoppages in play that destroy the flow of the game. If coaches were given one challenge, they would use them carefully and the fans would not be subjected to the endless delays that disrupt the flow of the game and, ultimately, make the games longer. Instead, the Rules Committee chooses to completely ignore the flaws in the replay system and have changed clock management. The short of that is we will watch less football just to speed up the games for TV. A replay system that provides fewer breaks in the action will give the networks what they want. Again, college football is the greatest sport on the planet and we hate to seem like we’re bashing this thing we schedule our year around. But if we were Czar, we’d make tweaks here and there that make it even better.   |
