No sportswriter wants to cover officiating following a highly-anticipated matchup or championship game that may or may not have been impacted by a bad call… and do sports fans really want to be bombarded with that content, either? Yet, that’s where so many of us find ourselves in the aftermath of critical (yet questionable) game outcomes.
A little over a week ago, during what many considered to be the biggest regular-season college football matchup between then-top-ranked Texas and #5 Georgia, a defensive pass interference call (which happened just before a game-changing interception) drew ire from Texas fans. After the initial ruling, restless fans started throwing trash on the field, so head coach Steve Sarkesian had to approach the bleachers and tell fans to stop. The trash was cleaned up quickly, but the pause gave the refs time to reverse the controversial call, which led to a Texas touchdown.
Then, the next day, in the final seconds of a pivotal Game 5 of the WNBA Finals, Minnesota Lynx forward Alana Smith was called for fouling New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart on what would have been a game-tying shot.
The replay, however, was questionable – Smith’s hand seemed to touch only the ball and it was clear that Steward traveled upon receiving the inbound before attempting the shot in the first place. Had the foul not been called, the play would have likely resulted in a turnover either way, which would have resulted in a Lynx championship… and that was also after a questionable foul call against Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu gave Lynx forward Bridget Carleton two game-winning free throws to secure Game 4, which forced Game 5 in the first place.
The aftermath set off major conversations surrounding officiating. After the SEC showdown on the gridiron, the big question surrounded the precedent set by the reversed call. If Texas fans can all but force a review by throwing trash on the field, will we see more hostility from disgruntled fans in the future?
The WNBA was immediately buzzing with controversy after Game 5, with analysis Andraya Carter calling the foul “terrible” in a post-game press show, and Lynx head coach, Cheryl Reeve stating “that s— was stolen from us” when she addressed the call in a post-game press conference. And, considering that quickly-growing women’s sports still only receive 15% of airtime on major sports networks, wasting airtime debating officiating has bigger implications than just game outcomes when it comes to the growth of women’s sports.
Missed Travel, complete Ghost foul, congratulations WNBA Refs you have officially won Breanna Stewart and Sabrina a Ring
— NazMuse (@MuseNaz) October 21, 2024
The SEC’s catchphrase “it just means more” certainly applies both to pivotal football calls and also to officiating in women’s sports. While it can be argued that the conversation about officiating in women’s hoops is positive because it brings eyes to the rapidly growing league (and all press is good press, right?) the stakes of accuracy in officiating is more important than ever. Yes, all press might be good press… but what if the press surrounding women’s sports could be better?
We live in an era where technology exists to prevent such controversies, and it’s increasingly important when the safety of officials, coaches, athletes, and fans is on the line. But the technological search for the remedy to bad calls (and the debates surrounding these technologies) is nothing new.
For example, every sports fan is familiar with the concept of instant replay, which has been around since 1963 when it was first used during an Army/Navy football game. Its debut was messy – after Army quarterback, Carl “Rollie” Stitchweh faked a handoff and ran the ball into the endzone for a touchdown, viewers watching the game on television were dumbfounded to watch him repeat what looked like the exact same play seconds later. But what fans watching on TV weren’t aware of was that the clip they were watching wasn’t live – it was a replay of the play they just watched moments earlier. However, viewers watching at home were so disoriented that the announcers had to clarify that what fans were watching on TV wasn’t a live play – it was an instant replay, a previously unheard-of technology that CBS producer, Tony Verna, debuted that evening.
Although commonplace today, pulling off instant replay was no small feat in an era of film reel technology. When Verna first tried his hand at piecing together a replay, he found the task nearly impossible. But it soon became part of the sports themselves. In 1989, after instant replay debuted at the college level, the NFL allowed its use by officials. The NBA followed suit in 2002, with former NBA official and current senior vice president of referee operation, Joe Borgia, calling instant replay a “necessary evil” to ensure fairness on the court.
“I think the mention of replay, none of us liked it when we first heard it. It’s a necessary evil. It’s necessary – you have to have it today.”
If the NBA’s reception to instant replay was lukewarm, Major League Baseball’s was downright chilly. Baseball is a sport that thrives on traditionalism – one of the most common refrains against instant replay in the sport is simply: “bad calls are a part of baseball,” a sports fan’s equivalent to “it is what it is.” MLB’s reluctance to innovate was (and has always been) apparent – commissioner Bud Selig first implemented instant replay in 2008, but only to determine whether or not home run calls were correct and to avoid delays in the (already slow) game of baseball.
However, full implementation of instant replay, including replay review, wasn’t a part of professional baseball until 2014–over a decade after both professional football and men’s basketball decided to fully embrace it, and almost a century-and-a-half into MLB’s existence as a professional sports league.
You would think that women’s sports leagues would have somewhat of an edge when it comes to on-the-court technological developments. After all, women’s sports fans and leagues tend to be younger and more progressive and open to innovation than their tradition-focused men’s leagues that are dominated by and marketed toward a much less diverse (straight, white, male) demographic.
However, the WNBA, which tipped off in 1997, only implemented instant replay in 2011 and adjusted its instant replay rules to include coaches’ challenges in 2023. The NWSL also lagged behind MLS in its implementation of Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology, or technology that assists the center referee through the use of video replay, which debuted in 2023 – seven years after the MLS first featured VAR.
Today, technology continues to push forward, and there doesn’t seem to be a slowdown on the horizon. As AI gains notoriety (both good and bad), it’s only a matter of time before it starts to shape the future of sports officiating. Assistant professor of Sport Management at Elon University and senior advisor to an AI-driven sports technology company, Bill Squadron, predicts that AI use in officiating will debunk the old “bad calls are a part of sports” mindset. He also claims sports fans are forced to live with the “rationalization” that there are no viable solutions to the same human error even the most elite athletes exhibit on the field of play from time to time.
“We should not be deluded by that rationalization, however,” writes Squadron for Sportico. “incorrect calls are not part of the game. The game is the game, and the kind of human errors that make sporting events exciting and unpredictable (the dropped pass, the botched grounder, the missed free throw) are not the same as officiating mistakes costing athletes a rightfully earned victory.”
While Squadron notes that most of today’s AI is not yet able to positively impact officiating, he writes that the sports industry already employs AI in other areas like analytics and movement tracking. Tennis has also been using AI to aid officials in determining whether a ball lands out of bounds since the mid-2000s. Major League Baseball has also been testing its Automatic Ball-Strike System in its minor league since 2019. The foundation, therefore, has already been laid.
“The next step,” Squadron writes, “is to embark on a development initiative that would, some years from now, get us to the point where a system could tell if an outfielder trapped a ball, if defensive holding should be flagged, if a collision was cross-checking or a clean hit.”
Peak Angel Hernandez during the Astros-Rangers game! The Rangers announcers are in disbelief over a series of missed strike calls.
“Well boys, better be swinging tonight, Angel’s got a dinner reservation.” pic.twitter.com/GttcOBN0i2
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 13, 2024
Officiating controversies seem to be approaching a breaking point, look no further than this Major League Baseball season when one of the main stories was the retirement of embattled umpire Angel Hernandez. Seemingly every week brought another umpiring controversy and announcers across the sport were constantly criticizing missed calls. In an age where a social media account like Umpire Auditor can show how many missed calls there have been and grade umpires on a nightly basis, the questions of why baseball would allow such significant human error are growing exponentially.
The inevitable AI shift could offer benefits to all. First, it discourages rough play if a definite penalty is guaranteed afterward, which benefits athletes and their coaches. While diehard fans will always believe their team was robbed due to bad officiating, it would dampen criticism. Sports need human referees for ethical reasons, like curbing match-fixing, preventing data bias, and assisting in player safety efforts, so officiating jobs for humans will still exist.
And sports media already relies enough on rage bait headlines and segments, often to the expense of quality analysis – just ask any longtime women’s basketball fan about WNBA coverage this past year. Why add fuel to the fire with questionable calls that take up valuable airtime that could instead be devoted to higher-quality coverage and analysis?
It’s not a stretch to posit that the quality of sports media could vastly improve with the quality of sports officiating.
