Sunday, January 09, 2000
It 'appears' replay doesn't settle anything
BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
In explaining how the officials decided to hand the Tennessee Titans a playoff victory Saturday, referee Phil Luckett said of Frank Wycheck's sideways toss to teammate Kevin Dyson, “It did not appear to be a forward pass.”
Appear? Appear? When it's raining, do the streets appear to be wet?
Was it a forward pass or wasn't it? Yes or no?
Wasn't the return of instant replay supposed to eliminate any and all “appears”? To settle arguments rather than create them?
Replay is the undisputed truth. Isn't it?
If I'm a Buffalo Bill today, I might appear to be a little agitated. It might seem as if I'm taking a walk. It might appear that way. Actually, I'm 20 flights up, the roof ends 10 paces ahead and I'm counting my steps until I get to 11.
Appear? That's beautiful.
You saw it. Titans down 16-15, 16 seconds to play, needing a miracle. Lorenzo Neal takes the Buffalo kickoff, hands off to Wycheck. Wycheck takes a couple steps to his right, turns, throws back to Dyson on the left. Dyson catches it, runs 75 yards for the touchdown.
Titans win.
Bills jobbed.
Did replay work? Not if your eyes saw what mine did. Mine saw Wycheck's right arm even with the 25-yard line. Mine saw Dyson's arms cradling the ball slightly ahead of the 25. The agreed-upon rules suggest that's a forward pass.
“The receiver catches it right there on that (25-) yard line,” Luckett said. Well, not exactly.
Time for a second look
Phil Luckett is on some roll. In two years, he has had an adverse affect on three football games. Luckett didn't know his head from his tail last Thanksgiving, when he gave Detroit the ball in overtime, even after Pittsburgh's Jerome Bettis had won the coin toss.
A few weeks later, Luckett gave the New York Jets a phantom touchdown that knocked the Seattle Seahawks out of the playoffs. On Saturday, he ended Buffalo's season.
Do we need more replay? Or less Luckett?
You have to laugh. The NFL went back to replay to take the human element out of officiating. You can't have a game or a season decided on a judgment call. If you have the technology to be infallible, you should use it.
That was the logic. Some logic.
In Luckett's judgment, Wycheck's forward pass did not appear to be a forward pass. Even with replay, human error came into play.
The worst thing about instant replay isn't that it makes games several minutes longer than they need to be, though that's a great reason for canning it again. Some Cincinnati games this year lasted longer than the Ming Dynasty.
Replay is wrong because even though football is played by people, coached by people and watched by people, we feel it needs to be officiated by machines. Baseball doesn't see it that way. Baseball allows its people to make mistakes. So do basketball and tennis and soccer and nearly every other sport.
Humans make mistakes. They get things wrong. Sometimes spectacularly.
Who wouldn't love replay in his life? Bad business move? Bad marriage, bad choice of restaurants? On further review, we should have eaten Chinese.
I could think of entire decades I'd like to replay. If you're a Buffalo Bills fan, you'd settle for one instant.
Did the refs get it right Saturday? I asked 10 different people; five saw it one way, five the other. It was a judgment call. You know: The sort of decision replay was going to eliminate.
Speaking of mistakes ...
In Sunday's column, I said Michigan State's Mateen Cleaves had not returned from an injury, which was amazing, given that Cleaves set a Spartans assist record on Saturday. Actually, Cleaves had already been back a week. My bad.
Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454. Fair Game, a collection of his columns, is available at local bookstores.
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