Bad Call: Technology's Attack On Referees And Umpires And How To Fix It (inside Technology)
by Harry Collins /
2016 / English / PDF, EPUB
20.9 MB Download
Good call or bad call, referees and umpires have always had the
final say in sports. Bad calls are more visible: plays are
televised backward and forward and in slow motion. New
technologies -- the Hawk-Eye system used in tennis and cricket,
for example, and the goal-line technology used in English
football -- introduced to correct bad calls sometimes get it
right and sometimes get it wrong, but always undermine the
authority of referees and umpires.
Good call or bad call, referees and umpires have always had the
final say in sports. Bad calls are more visible: plays are
televised backward and forward and in slow motion. New
technologies -- the Hawk-Eye system used in tennis and cricket,
for example, and the goal-line technology used in English
football -- introduced to correct bad calls sometimes get it
right and sometimes get it wrong, but always undermine the
authority of referees and umpires.Bad Call
Bad Call looks at the
technologies used to make refereeing decisions in sports,
analyzes them in action, and explains the consequences.
looks at the
technologies used to make refereeing decisions in sports,
analyzes them in action, and explains the consequences.
Used well, technologies can help referees reach the right
decision and deliver justice for fans: a fair match in which the
best team wins. Used poorly, however, decision-making
technologies pass off statements of probability as perfect
accuracy and perpetuate a mythology of infallibility. The authors
re-analyze three seasons of play in English Premier League
football, and discover that goal line technology was irrelevant;
so many crucial wrong decisions were made that different teams
should have won the Premiership, advanced to the Champions
League, and been relegated. Simple video replay could have
prevented most of these bad calls. (Major League baseball learned
this lesson, introducing expanded replay after a bad call cost
Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game.)
Used well, technologies can help referees reach the right
decision and deliver justice for fans: a fair match in which the
best team wins. Used poorly, however, decision-making
technologies pass off statements of probability as perfect
accuracy and perpetuate a mythology of infallibility. The authors
re-analyze three seasons of play in English Premier League
football, and discover that goal line technology was irrelevant;
so many crucial wrong decisions were made that different teams
should have won the Premiership, advanced to the Champions
League, and been relegated. Simple video replay could have
prevented most of these bad calls. (Major League baseball learned
this lesson, introducing expanded replay after a bad call cost
Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game.)
What matters in sports is not computer-generated projections of
ball position but what is seen by the human eye -- reconciling
what the sports fan sees and what the game official sees.
What matters in sports is not computer-generated projections of
ball position but what is seen by the human eye -- reconciling
what the sports fan sees and what the game official sees.