In baseball and world football, the standard for overturning a call on the field is "clear and obvious error." If a replay takes minutes (not seconds) and multiple prolonged looks at replay vantage points, by definition, no error detected could be clear or obvious. I propose a 30 second time limit on replays. If the replay official has to go beyond that it cannot have been clear or obvious one way or the other and the call on the field should stand. Stick to what is clear and obvious and don't go to the point where the replay official is just guessing.
I used to be a proponent for replay. Now? I'd chuck it all and go back to people simply making the best call they can from their vantage point.
It really depends on the sport. In football every play could swing the game. In most sports the bad calls are going to even out, discounting any home court or superstar bias, so the only time plays should really be reviewable is if they're close enough to the end and the game is close enough that it will swing the outcome.
The only sport where I think replay works really well is Tennis. Every other sport has made a bit of a mockery out of the system. I'm ready to go back to the old ways, or make it so if you can't determine it in 90 seconds, the call stands. They take too long.
I’m surprised how many people say they’d rather see a bad call swing the outcome of the game than wait a few minutes. An Indian friend of mine said the opposite. That in cricket they review every call to make sure it was right and nobody minds because what is important is accuracy.
Cricket can literally take days to play a complete match. They have the time. Baseball games used to be played in two hours or less and now routinely exceed three hours. A 30 second limit to review is plenty. If it takes longer than that, the umpire's call was not clearly/obviously right or wrong. No one wants an umpire's error to change a game, but it happens literally every day on ball/strike calls which are not reviewable. Baseball is played by prople and should be officiated by people. No computers, no robots.
I was thinking more of games like football (Either American or otherwise) where there are so few scores, any single score can totally change the course of the game. Stuff like ball/strike calls and basketball plays all that matters is consistency of what they call for both teams. If computers can see better than humans, and have more reliable memory than humans, why shouldn't we use them, especially on things like hockey goals, pivotal first downs, etc? Or plays in the last two minutes or so? Baseball games are longer because of commercials and because hitters and pitchers take their damn sweet time now. A few safe/out reviews wouldn't add more than a few minutes total, having the amount of ads they had in the 1950s and pitch counts would save over half an hour. And frankly, the NBA officiating is horrible and has been for decades. Home teams and superstars get away with things that everyone else gets called for. Some kind of measure needs to be taken to bring back equal officiating in the sport. So Lebron James gets the same calls everyone else does. The amount of flopping and preferential officiating there is drags down the entire sport, and anyone who protests longer than two seconds gets techs called against them. It's no fun to watch when teams like the Lakers always have tikky tack crap called against the visiting team but then get away with taking ten steps and elbowing a defender in the face.
I don't watch NBA basketball, but I constantly hear on sports talk shows about the shitty officiating. I was watching Sports Center the other night and saw Lebron tuck the ball under his arm and take 3-1/2 steps before shooting a layup - no traveling.
That's really the problem. Officiating in all sports seems to have gone to shit, for whatever reason. There have always been bad umps, but not on the level we're seeing. If each ump would at least be consistent, I wouldn't mind a narrow or tight strike zone. But the absolute fucking sloppiness is inexcusable. I know this isn't replay related, but it should cause Skynet™ Strike Zone to be implemented sooner rather than later. The rule on "what is a swing" is stupid, because by the rule, no corner ump can possibly make the call if it's close, so they must be flipping a coin. I still think a camera directly over the plate would help on strike calls and swing calls. Put the view permanently in the corner of the Jumbotron™ for everyone to see, including the blind umps, or have an ump in the booth monitoring those calls. I don't think replays add so much time to any game that taking 2 or 3 minutes really does any harm. A pitcher can have practice throws while a replay is going on. You might lose a little momentum if you're on a roll, but that's bound to happen during a pitching change too.
The problem with VAR in football (Soccer) is that it doesn't remove the human element and the whole reason we wanted it in the first place was the human element kept making mistakes. The problem remains the poor level of Match Officiating we put up with and in England the standard are the lowest in my life time. Mike Riley being sacked from his job at the general manager of the Professional Game Match Officials Limited would be a start.
The average length of a baseball game in 1991 was two hours, 54 minutes. In 2019, it was three hours, 10 minutes. (And the average length of a game hasn't been below two hours since 1928.) Those extra sixteen minutes are not strangling the game. In any event, I'll never understand people who insist that blown calls are a good and necessary part of baseball (or any sport).