The Birth of Instant Replay

Today marks the 44th Anniversary of the use of instant replay in televised sports (see http://tonyvernatv.com/links/aboutinstantreplay.pdf and http://sportsontheair.blogspot.com/2007/12/today-marks-birth-of-instant-replay.html ).

So the question is, in your opinions, has its evolution been a good thing for sports and competition?

 

Next poll question: invention of the soccer ball -- good or bad for worldwide competition?

 

What is a soccer ball????? ;-)

 

Agree with TSP.

I think the late Bill MacPhail, then CBS Sports President, was also instrumental in pioneering instant replay.

Even if it hadn't been a boon for sports, anything Bill did was okay with me.

 

It's a basketball with a quilt on it.

 

Great for fans, great for presentation of the game.

Once it was implemented into the games themselves, to some degree, we became lawyers instead of fans or observers, with the degree of that dynamic contingent on the bitchiness of the individual.

To me, there's something wrong with letting terms like "conclusive evidence" into the sports lexicon. I get weary of fans trying to litigate plays (screaming "replay, replay", for example) instead of just taking them for what they are ... good or bad.

It's a microcosm of a larger societal issue, basically, that many among us are spoiled, and there's an inability to accept that sometimes things go wrong and there isn't recourse for it. And if you think I'm pointing the finger at others, I know I'm as much a part of that culture as anyone else. Instant replay is an extension of that.

 

Awesome.

 

It's the anniversary of instant replay in American televised sports.

Hockey Night in Canada had been using instant replay well before 1963--as early as 1955.

 

Well hooray for the bulldog!

 

What, they did not use it for the CBC Curling Match of the Week too ?

 

Didn't need it. Curling is already in slow motion.

 

So is the sense of entitlement that demands that "any game I want to see should be beamed to my TV."

Witness all the outrage any time a game is relegated to NFL Network.

On the thread subject . . .

Just saw an old episode of Dragnet. Joe and Bill are watching a football game at Bill's house.

"That instant replay is something, isn't it?" Joe says.