Let's Go to the Tape

By STEVE LOPEZ

Famine, disease, wrongful prosecution. The injustices of the world are many, but there may be none more dreaded or debated than a blown call late in a National Football League game. Coaches and players foam; league officials squirm; and frazzled fans dial the personality-disorder hotline called sports talk radio. Pro football, which made violence a Sunday virtue and Vegas the national bank, is the beast in all of us.

So let's kill the refs.

When three blatant officiating blunders led to losses for the Seattle Seahawks, Buffalo Bills and Pittsburgh Steelers in recent weeks, the whole playoff picture was torn from its frame. The NFL politburo announced that instant replay, in use from 1986 to 1991, may be revived for the playoffs.

Initial support gave way to caution, though, and to doubts about whether to even put it to a vote among team owners this week. Some owners fretted about game delays (as if officials don't already huddle like zebras at a watering hole); technological complexities; and when to allow challenges, by whom and how often.

Legitimate concerns, but guess what, guys? Air-traffic control is complicated. So is gene splicing. But reviewing a 5-yd. run on instant replay? Is there any good reason, with a game on the line, a season on the line, maybe the Super Bowl on the line, that everyone but the referees should have the benefit of technology that's roughly 35 years old?

Here's a thought: every dope in the world has got a cell phone. Give one to the ref, and have someone sitting in front of a TV call and overrule him when he blows it. Just do it on obvious blunders for now, and work out a better system in the off-season.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello objects that "people can disagree about what's obvious." True enough. So let's set a standard. Let's use the end of the Jets-Seahawks game Dec. 6 at New Jersey's Meadowlands, seconds dying, Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde knifing for the goal line with the ball. Jimmy Hoffa might be somewhere in that end zone, but Testaverde was a crowbar short. Yet the Jets were given the touchdown that might have knocked Seattle out of the playoffs. "It's nonsense to say 'Let's wait,'" says Fox-TV analyst Tim Green, a former defensive end for the Atlanta Falcons. "That play could end up costing [Seattle coach] Dennis Erickson his job."

Green is a man whose only apparent touchdown in an eight-year career was called back after an instant replay. But not only does he also want the replay back and want it now, he wants the league to get to work on a laser-detection system to determine whether a ball crosses the goal line or a ball carrier steps on the sideline.

Several owners remain philosophically opposed to any nonhuman intrusion on the dignity of the game, which is essentially a blood sport. But a random sampling of teams suggests replay will get a thorough review in the off-season, as will oft debated questions such as whether officials should be full-time professionals rather than weekend warriors with day jobs.

Among today's players, even 300-lb. blobs with guts hanging over their belts can dash to catch the pizza truck. That makes it hard for officials to keep up and get close enough to see the play, but not so close that they get crushed. Still, Red Cashion, who retired in 1996 after 25 years in stripes, believes "officials are better today than they were 25 years ago. There's better technique, more training and more intense recruiting." This year's errors are a blip and not a trend, he contends, and if referees don't look as good as they used to, it's partly because TV misses nothing.

All the more reason to use it.

"The options available are astronomical," says Jerry Gepner of SporTVision Systems, an NFL consultant on broadcast technology. Computer-driven sorting of images is much faster and more accurate than it was in 1991, when 90 calls were overturned on replay. (The league later determined that 12 of those reversals were in error.) A field official today could use a sideline TV monitor to quickly review a play from several camera angles.

It gets better. On Fox TV last week, Tony Verna, the originator of instant replay while with CBS in 1963, showed off his latest creation: a cell phone-size TV with playback capability. A referee could carry it on his belt. Says the NFL's Aiello: "People come to us all the time with ideas like this, and anything that might improve the game is always under consideration."

Anyone suggest seeing-eye dogs?