Pete Carroll And I Agree: The NFL Should Get Rid of Instant Replay and Live With The Officials' Calls

A lot of different people have a lot of different ideas for improving the NFL, as evidenced by Peter King’s 25-person poll in Monday’s “Football Morning in America,” with proposals on everything from changing overtime rules to implementing helmet cameras.

Predictably, a handful of opinions centered on instant replay, always a topic of conversation in a league with a history of controversial calls. But Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll may have had the strongest take of all: Get rid of it entirely.

“Get rid of — or at least decrease the use of — instant replay,” he suggested. “I get all the reasons why we have instant replay, and technology has opened up a new world for us to get to this point. But I miss the human element of trusting the officials to make the calls in the moment and then the rest of us having to live with what they called. It was both fun and frustrating, but I really liked the game better when the officials were just as much a part of the game as the players.”

Thank you Pete Carroll!!!! And I’ll be the first to say that technology is great. I would kill myself if I lived in a time period where there wasn’t internet, iPhones, television, or GPS. And toss in things we take for granted like air conditioning and refrigerator/freezers. What the hell would we do without refrigerator/freezers? Everyone’s frozen pizzas would spoil. I couldn’t imagine the shit our forefathers went through. But I will say I am jealous of one, and only one, thing they got to live with. And that is that the referee’s call is FINAL.

I know that replay helps the officials get it right, so if that’s your argument then obviously we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. Because quite frankly, I’d rather that sometimes the officials just get it WRONG. I’m not saying I want blatant bad calls, but I am saying that I want the officials to be a part of the game. I like it that way. The human element creates controversy that up until recently, I found to be an enjoyable part of being a sports fan, whether I was on the winning or losing end of the bad call. It gave us something to talk about. Something to hold a grudge over. But now, we use replay to look at every little fingernail and shoelace, and the game sucks because of it. Do you guys remember just this year in the NCAA Championship when the Virginia player clear as day knocked the ball out of bounds at the end of the game? But then we went to replay and it showed that the Texas Tech player actually had the last fingernail on it? That call goes the other way 10000000% of the time without replay, but replay completely changed the game because of too much technology.

Some of sports greatest moments would have been reversed if there was replay. Think about Derek Jeter’s Game 1 home run in the ALCS. Jeffrey Maier clearly stuck his glove out over the wall and into play.

Right or wrong, it’s now a part of the history of both the Yankees and the Orioles now. Grandfathers will bitch to their grandkids about it, just like the Tigers and Armando Galarraga’s imperfect Perfect Game.

Instant replay would’ve fixed that right up in a second, but I like that it didn’t! Same shit happened in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series when first base ump Denkinger called the Royals’ Jorge Orta safe on a close play in the ninth inning. The Cardinals protested unsuccessfully and ended up losing the game just a few plays later. The next night, Kansas City won Game 7, all on a play that was wrong.

People even say that the Immaculate Reception would have been overturned had we had today’s technology.

Look, I can’t get mad or even really argue with people that say that the goal is to get the call right. I understand it completely. I just think that the game was better off when we didn’t go to the booth or monitor for every play, especially every play that mattered. I like my sports with the human element in them. Take the technology out of my sports. Just don’t take it out of the rest of my life. That shit would SUCK.