HOW HE SEES IT Instant replay brings endless vitriol

By PAUL C. CAMPOS
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
A century ago, Havelock Ellis observed that "what we call 'Progress' is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance." This is a rather un-American idea; we like to believe that human history is a record of progress from barbarism to enlightenment, a.k.a. us.
The characteristically American faith in progress is reflected in such things as the addition of instant replay review to supplement the decisions of football referees. Originally adopted by the NFL, instant replay has just been adopted in major college football, and already has produced some interesting and cautionary results.
Instant replay was introduced to college football last season by the Big 10 conference, partly in response to complaints from Joe Paterno, Penn State's legendary coach, who unleashed a series of tirades against officials following a couple of losses in 2002. Paterno was particularly upset by a controversial call that went against his team in a game against archrival Michigan. In an apparent attempt to mollify him, the conference announced it would experiment with a replay review system.
This past weekend Michigan and Penn State met for the first time since the 2002 game. In one of those predictable ironies that good novelists and screenwriters avoid, the replay system ended up aiding Michigan in a controversial fashion, thus playing a key role in the Wolverines' seventh consecutive victory over Paterno's team.
Controversy
The problem with any replay system is that it doesn't eliminate controversy; it merely shifts it to another level of decision making. For example, the Big 10 replay system requires "indisputable video evidence" that a call was mistaken before the call on the field can be reversed. This is intended to be some rigorous legalistic definition, but I'm a lawyer and I have no real idea what this phrase is supposed to mean. That the replay official is 95 percent certain that the initial call was wrong? Ninety-nine percent? That he's "fairly certain?" The rule doesn't define its terms.
Nor would it help if it did; the definitions would themselves remain open to multiple interpretations, and so on. The practical result is that different replay officials will inevitably employ different standards of proof when deciding whether to reverse a call -- precisely the situation the replay system was designed to avoid.
In sum, the replay system produces a benefit -- an occasional obviously mistaken call will be overturned -- but at a considerable cost, including delays in the game, fans not knowing when it's safe to celebrate a play, and, perversely, new sets of controversies about whether replay officials should have reversed particular calls.
The most striking cost is the anger that is generated by dashed expectations of error-free, or at least greatly improved, officiating. After their team's latest loss to Michigan, Penn State fans flooded the Internet with a remarkable outburst of collective paranoia, claiming that Big 10 officials were conspiring against their team, and demanding that the university withdraw from the conference.
If this were merely a matter of football fans upset about the outcome of a game, it would be nothing more than a sociological curiosity. But, sociologically speaking, the replay system and the reaction to it are characteristic of many other features of American life. For example, our legal system is based on what sometimes seems like a boundless faith that more elaborate laws and procedures will produce more justice -- that is, that the benefits of further review will outweigh the costs.
When it becomes clear that this isn't the case, people become understandably upset. They've been promised justice, and instead they often end up with little more than another delay of the game.
X Paul Campos is a law professor at the University of Colorado.