September 8, 2003
I Hate Football
Since the NASCAR race was on Saturday night this week, I decided to indulge in the Sunday night NFL game between the R-A-Y-D-A-Z and the Titans. That is when the trouble began. Football always seems to have so many bad calls that are seemingly clear when watched via replay but the officials never get them right. And they have this whole challenge thing but for some reason the Raiders were not able to use it at this certain point in the game or maybe it was the type of call. Whatever. So the Titans got a touchdown they didn't deserve. Then when the Raiders get the ball back, about 12 Titans somehow got a hold of Gannon and took him down and ripped his leg off. Roughing? No call of course -- we are in Tennessee! That took Gannon out for that drive, which nothing happened on. When Gannon returns, he threw 5 straight passes for about 65 yards and they scored. But time ran out and the game was over. Can't we peek at the cameras please? No. You suck. That is like not using the security camera's video tape in the bank robbery to identify the robbers because the eye witness in the bank said that is was George Bush so we are going to arrest him.
Hell, over in baseball, QuesTec (who I used to contract for) is able to find, in 3-D space, the exact tenth of an inch a ball is traveling through at any given time. But the umpires think the technology is flawed. Blow me. This same technology is used to find all kinds of stuff on a battlefield in war. I think it can handle finding a white ball on a known grid with fixed cameras traveling from known point A to known point B. Cameras don't blink -- people do!
So my issue (I think) is with these older sports and their lack of desire to incorporate technology into the game. They say it "ruins" the game or they say "that isn't the way its always been played". Isn't the ideal game one where you do not have officials at all because everything is black and white? But since that has been impossible (arguably until the last few decades), we have come to believe that shitty calls are part of sports. Whatever. I am all for technology. Put freakin GPS on the players -- if it doesn't interfere with the game and improves the calls. Go for it. In NASCAR, everything is based on cameras and GPS so you get a much more fair contest. Can you believe the southern boys figured that out before all the other head sporting wizards?
