The Promise of a Perfect Call
Both soccer’s Video Assistant Referee (VAR) and the NBA’s Instant Replay Center were born from the same noble idea: to fix the game-changing, incontrovertible mistake. A referee is only human, after all. They can’t see every angle at once. Replay was
meant to be a safety net, deployed only for “clear and obvious errors.” In soccer, this meant correcting wrongly awarded goals, penalty decisions, or red cards. In the NBA, it was about getting last-second shots and out-of-bounds calls right. The sales pitch was simple: we’ll use technology to eliminate the howlers, the blown calls that live in infamy. The goal wasn’t to re-referee the entire game from a studio, but to provide a quick, decisive correction when something went terribly wrong. On paper, it’s a flawless solution to a human problem.
The Human Element You Can't Erase
The core issue for both sports is that technology can’t eliminate subjectivity. Replay is brilliant at determining objective facts: Was the player’s foot on the line? Did the ball cross the goal line? But most controversial calls aren’t about objective fact; they’re about interpretation. Take a soccer handball. The rulebook is a maze of phrases like “unnatural position” and “deliberate action.” A slow-motion replay can show a ball hitting an arm, but it can’t definitively tell you the player’s intent or whether their arm’s position was a natural part of their movement. Similarly, the NBA’s most hated judgment call—the block versus the charge—is a nightmare for replay. You can zoom in and see if a defender’s feet were set, but the call also depends on whether the offensive player had a chance to avoid contact. There is no camera angle that can measure intent or a “basketball play.” In both cases, we’ve just moved the subjective decision from a referee on the field to another referee watching a screen, adding layers of process without adding much clarity.
Killing the Flow, One Review at a Time
Sports are built on rhythm and emotion. Replay is the enemy of both. In soccer, the greatest moment of pure, unadulterated joy is a goal. But with VAR, that joy is now provisional. A team scores, the stadium erupts, and then… everyone waits. The celebration is put on hold for two minutes while an invisible official in a booth draws lines on a screen to see if a player’s armpit was a millimeter offside. The eventual decision, right or wrong, comes after the organic emotion has evaporated. The NBA has the same problem, but at the other end of the game. The final two minutes, once a thrilling crescendo of action, can now devolve into a drawn-out legal proceeding. A foul call is reviewed, then an out-of-bounds play, then a coach’s challenge. The tension dissipates, replaced by the tedious sight of officials staring at a monitor, turning what should be the most exciting part of the game into its most boring.
The Search for the Microscopic Foul
The other unintended consequence of high-definition, slow-motion replay is the discovery of infractions that no one would ever notice in real-time. What was meant to catch the obvious mistake is now used for forensic analysis. In the Premier League, this has led to the dreaded “armpit offside,” where goals are disallowed because a fraction of a player’s torso, which they can't even score with, is technically ahead of the last defender. It’s technically correct according to the rule, but it feels fundamentally wrong and violates the spirit of the game. The NBA equivalent is the endless review of whether a player’s sneaker grazed the sideline on an inbounds play or if a fingertip brushed the rim on a goaltending call. These are fouls that have zero material impact on the play, yet they are scrutinized with the same intensity as a major error, leading fans to feel the game is being hijacked by technicalities.
