Plague Of The Video Review
Mar 14Something that goes along with what I touched upon in this entry is that people are trying to be more and more politically correct. Now granted, I am all for finding out the truth and discovering what is going on.
However when you have the National Basketball Association going back and reviewing old tapes and determining that a foul should have been called on Kobe Bryant, you are not doing right by the spirit of the game. I read an article similar to this article, and I was slightly outraged at the ridiculousness of it all. I’m a Los Angeles Laker fan, for better or worse. And I think that Kobe Bryant is pretty amazing as a basketball player. But this is not about that. This is about how people are always trying to be exactly right, holding to the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law. What is that doing in an entry about sports you ask? Well people have been applying that idea more and more to sports. There have been the sudden burst of video replays in college football that have led to some good things (like fixed calls) and some bad things (like long games and still getting the call wrong). And then there are the extreme cases of outrage where officials such as Stu Jackson will re-visit a game simply to find faults. Where there might have been a regular foul called, they will turn into a suspension. Now, that just seems like idiocy to me. Let the officials at the game decide what the call should be. If you’re so willing to make a call after the fact, then how will you be able to overturn a call after the fact?
It’s irritating to think of the things that are starting to go on the world. It might seem like I’m getting worked up over a stupid game, but it has ramifications in all of the world. Why? Because it’s not limited to a game, it’s the mindset that people are starting to have more and more. And that is even more troubling than the problems with video review in sports.