Instant Replay

PHOENIX -- After six years of further review and much debate, the NFL owners reversed instant replay yesterday.With four owners joining the ranks of the traditional seven opponents, instant replay fell four votes short of approval for the 1992 season. The replay has been used to take a second look at officials' calls.Supporters needed 21 votes to approve instant replay for a seventh straight season.The four votes that doomed instant replay were cast by Norman Braman, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles; Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys; Dick Steinberg, general manager of the New York Jets; and Sam Wyche, coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

PALM BEACH, Fla. - The Ravens' support for instant replay won't be challenged by coach Brian Billick. In what should be the most substantial news coming out of this week's annual NFL owners meetings, the Ravens will be among the teams expected to push for the system to become a permanent fixture. The proposal needs to be approved by 24 of the 32 team owners. At the very least, instant replay will be extended for five years if there's not enough support to make it permanent. According to a Ravens spokesman, owners Art Modell and Steve Bisciotti - the outgoing owner and soon-to-be sole owner, respectively - support instant replay and will endorse the proposal.

You know the only time people really complain about instant replay? When a difficult call that is subject to multiple interpretations goes against their team. That's it. And that's why replay works. Because no one is full of outrage and crying about conspiracies when it works to their benefit. That's why any argument that begins with, "This is why we need to do away with this stupid system!" gets immediately dismissed in my household. Replay is a necessary nuisance in the NFL. For the most part, it works pretty well.

It's not crystal clear why the NFL's instant replay system has worked so poorly the past few years. It's not even clear what specifically isn't working. But there's no doubt that it doesn't work. At the very least, it should be completely overhauled in the offseason - and if it weren't so disruptive, it ought to be done sooner. At most, it should be discarded for something else. Anything else. Except that "human element," because that wasn't good enough, either. The human element is what's making a disaster of things now. Humans are either making bad rules, enforcing them poorly, interpreting them poorly or some combination of them all. Viewers can believe what they want to believe about Santonio Holmes' catch Sunday, but referee Walt Coleman was responsible for knowing the rules, reviewing the replay and explaining his decision to the crowd, both coaches and, later, a pool reporter - and he did none of that well.

KONA, Hawaii -- The National Football League proved one thing again yesterday that could be a good omen for expansion: what the commissioner wants, he usually gets.The issues this time were the 1993 Super Bowl in Phoenix and instant replay, and commissioner Paul Tagliabue got his way on both issues.The owners preliminarily agreed to give the city the 1996 game, a compromise he worked out with Arizona Gov. Fife Symington as they decided to pull the 1993 Super Bowl out of Phoenix, but "preliminarily" agreed to give it the 1996 game.

SAN DIEGO -- Upon further review, commissioner Paul Tagliabue thinks instant replay may be returning next year.At his annual Super Bowl news conference yesterday, Tagliabue said, "I think because of Mike's [Holmgren] leadership as co-chairman of the competition committee, there's a better than normal chance that instant replay would be be adopted this year."He said it is likely the owners would install a coaches' challenge system in which a limited number of plays would be reviewed."If the committee members come back with that type of a proposal again, I would support it," he said.

A new discovery by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers suggests that the brain may be able to work much like the instant replay on sports shows. But here is the surprising part - it runs backward and super-fast: instant replay on rewind. Scientists at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have managed to record such reverse replay signals from rats that ran laps on a small track, according to an online report in the journal Nature last week. And that reverse replay appears to occur only during pauses for reflection, helping the rodents learn from what they have just experienced, the researchers say - as if it were the rapid review at the end of a college course.

PALM DESERT, Calif. -- In a presentation to the NFL owners yesterday, the Ravens' past spending habits were used as an example of how teams shouldn't handle the salary cap.Commissioner Paul Tagliabue didn't mention the Ravens by name, but said, "There were some examples given today of people who've done foolish kinds of contracts, front-loading, back-loading, voidables where they're [being charged] $7 or $8 million of $41 million of cap room for players who are no longer playing," he said.

Too often in this life, we ignore chances to make modest improvements because we're waiting for the perfect solution. I'm glad baseball didn't make that mistake with instant replay. Instead, commissioner Bud Selig implemented limited replay as soon as he reached agreements with his players and umpires. If the technology saves even one blown call down the stretch this season, it was worth it. Some baseball men felt replay was introduced hastily. Orioles manager Dave Trembley said that if technological kinks haven't been worked out, "they are going to set themselves up for some embarrassing situations."

PALM BEACH, Fla. -- NFL owners gave a thumbs up to instant replay and a thumbs down to celebrations as they wrapped up their annual March meetings yesterday. The owners voted 28-3 to approve instant replay for another year, and 30-0, with St. Louis abstaining, to limit multi-player celebrations, such as the Rams' "Bob and Weave" and the Ravens' "Baltimore Bomb." Replay passed by the same margin as last year, but two teams changed their votes -- Kansas City voted no and the New York Jets voted yes. The Cincinnati Bengals and Arizona Cardinals again voted no. The league will continue to use the instant replay system it implemented last year, with a coach's challenge system in all but the last two minutes of each half, when a replay official in the booth can call for a replay.