After Further Review: My Life Including the Infamous, Controversial, and Unforgettable Calls That Changed the NFL by Mike Pereira & Rick Jaffe

After Further Review: My Life Including the Infamous, Controversial, and Unforgettable Calls That Changed the NFL by Mike Pereira & Rick Jaffe

Author:Mike Pereira & Rick Jaffe [Pereira, Mike & Jaffe, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: American Football, Autobiography, Biography, Non-Fiction, Sports, Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9781633195905
Google: zZfgDAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B01KOVB5XA
Publisher: Triumph Books
Published: 2016-09-14T23:00:00+00:00


10. Finally, “Instant” Gratification

Without question, Instant replay was the biggest change during my time with the NFL, and I had a front-row seat for something that would truly alter the course of professional football history.

The year was 1999, and as I said, instant replay would return, but it wasn’t the first time it had been utilized in the NFL. It was first put in for the 1986 season, and it was used for a five-year period until 1991.

To understand how the NFL got to this point, we need to go back and trace the origins of instant replay. The concept really began in 1983 when Art McNally, the supervisor of officials, was working on it with Tex Schramm of the Dallas Cowboys, who was on the Competition Committee.

Discussions had been taking place about having officials get more plays called correctly on the field. McNally and Schramm experimented for a period of three years (1983–85) by putting together a system of instant replay during games using those old VCR machines. You remember those, right? They were the machines that you always saw the flashing 12:00 because nobody knew how to program those damn clocks.

That system was not used, but the two of them would sit in a booth and see how efficiently they could correct calls.

In 1986, they put a system in place where the replay official would be in the press box using the VCRs. The official could call down to the field in an attempt to correct a mistake or confirm a call that was made.

But instant replay was full of flaws and not a well-thought-out system. While the intent to correct obvious mistakes was a good thing, there were no time limits for reviewing a play and no limits to the number of times that you could stop the game.

Once, in Dallas in 1989, the game was stopped 14 times because of instant replay. That imploded the system, because it took away the flow of the game. That was the beginning of the end.

You might say that the replay official, L.T. Bonner, had a quick trigger—uh, buzzer—finger. Like I said, he stopped the game 14 times to review decisions that were made on the field. Those stoppages caused delays of approximately 30 minutes.

In Bonner’s only reversal, he moved the spot of the ball by two yards. When Referee Jerry Markbreit was asked afterward about being second-guessed so much, he replied: “No comment.”

“No comment” spoke volumes for everybody because nobody liked instant replay—the coaches, the players, the officials, and even fans were not fans of it.

It destroyed the tempo of the game, and it wrecked the officiating because officials played no part in the system. The officials became tentative because they knew “big brother” in the press box had the ability to change a call.

I don’t need to explain how the officials felt about it. You had a system that was bound to implode, which it did in 1991. The pace of the game was the primary reason, but you had a lack of buy-in from the officials being a key component as well.



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