When it comes down to personal interests and hobbies, one of the most notable ones worldwide has got to be sports. Sports brings people from different cultures, races, and backgrounds all together. Most people around the world can name a favorite sport if asked and that just speaks to the impact that it has had on the human race since the beginning of time. Technology is making its way through sports in more ways than one and fans everywhere are either loving it or hating it.
Whether you like soccer, basketball, or even football most, there is a level of replay review that takes place to ensure that the correct calls were made and nothing was missed. For example, if a player fouls another player in basketball really hard, the referees will take a second to go back and look at the video. While looking at the video, they will then review it to see if there was any malicious intent or vicious act that was missed before.
While the example that I used before seems like there could be nothing wrong with replay review, its major criticisms come from when it’s used in a situation where they finally see something that could never have been seen live. The best way I can describe this in an example away from sports is like a student getting an F for plagiarism for an essay they wrote in the 6th grade but the student is getting penalized while he’s in the 10th grade. The time has already passed for them to get in trouble so how can they even discipline the student when that time has passed?
In soccer, the replay review has a specific name in VAR. VAR stands for video assistant referee. Once the VAR communicates to the on field referee that the previous play is under review, all play is stopped and the review takes place. In an offside check, the referee team uses an insane technology that shows the body parts of each player during the game to see whether the player was onside or offside. This is one of the most hated uses of the VAR as there is a linesman referee who should be able to see whether a player is offside or onside. However, VAR gets the call right 100% of the time using an advanced technology that would answer just that question. This leads to which side you’re really on. Should most calls be used by the naked eye? Should these advanced technologies be used to make calls?
One of the growing issues in the MLB is the introduction of robot umpires. Since the creation of the sport we know as baseball, there has always been a human umpire behind the batter who calls the pitches from the pitcher. They’re either known as balls or strikes out of their hand. There are so many criticisms that come with these human umpires as they often miss calls and eject the managers of teams at times. Therefore, the easy fix would just be to implement these robot umpires so everything can be good, right? No, wrong! The rebuttal from the fans of the MLB across the world is that human error is supposed to be a part of baseball. They believe that the close calls should be at the discretion of the human umpire and not 100% right. Whether you want everything to be perfect or discretion based is up to each individual. To test how impactful these robot umpires will be, the minor leagues will test them in their games this upcoming season. If it proves to be beneficial and not ruin the game, I’m sure that it will make its way up to the big leagues and MLB sooner rather than later.
When it comes down to sports, it’s almost like politics in a way that you won’t agree with everything but you can take bits from each stance and create your own ideologies, especially when it comes with the implementation of technology in it. Hopefully in the future, we’ll be able to really see what’s good and what’s bad for sports as we are just in our initial stages of advanced technology in it.