The Future Of Officiating

The Future Of Officiating

Once upon a time there were goal judges in hockey. These were men, situated directly behind the hockey net, who operated a switch - which they flipped - that signified when, in their esteemed opinion, the puck had crossed the goalline.

While goal judges haven’t exactly disappeared from the hockey landscape, what has changed is the mechanics of how a goal is judged and who, ultimately, is doing the judging. Even though most arenas have video goal review facilities on-site, the final decision rests with the amorphous NHL HQ. Essentially all goals can now be and ARE now being judged by the same person.

Under the guise of accuracy, efficiency and objectivity, on-field rulings are now in the hands of trained experts backed by cutting edge technology.

Look around at any sport at the highest levels and you will see the very same thing happening. All major rulings, in any particular game, are the responsibility of that league’s head office although this is not necessarily a bad thing.

Having consistency and integrity on a corporate level is of the utmost importance in today’s world of sport. There is, we are told, too much on the line to risk getting things wrong, even though they’re very often still wrong. That is, there’s at least an argument to be made that they still didn’t make the right call.

Video evidence, like first hand experiential evidence, is often subjective which, ironically, still leaves the final decision in the hands of a human being. At least for right now, that is.

As technology’s processing speed and 3D modelling improves it’s not out of the question to foresee a world where computers make instantaneous rulings on on-field activity.

It’s not hard to imagine how questions like “Was it a first down? or “Was it a strike? could be answered immediately by utilizing triangulation technology that would effectively stitch together various angles of the play in question to produce almost irrefutable evidence. Rather than looking to the umpire’s signal for a ball or strike, we’d instead have the drama of waiting for a sound effect combined with cool graphics that would answer the question once and for all.

My arguments aren’t an attempt to simply eulogize refs and officials. We’ve all seen too many bad calls - bad human calls - that video replay has made to look even worse. Humans aren’t necessarily the answer but what needs to be asked, is what’s the question in the first place? Decide that and you chart your path forward.

Is it, for example, okay for sports to be inherently fickle and imperfect in how they play out? Aren’t disputed calls (even against insurmountable evidence) just part of the game? Ultimately, what are we trying to achieve here?

The answer to this only seems obvious in regards to the short term. Of course we think we’re trying to achieve perfection and we think the system is being built to eliminate egregiously bad calls. Problem is, it’s not. We look at video review and technology as just another (great) set of eyes - as in a failsafe - but we only see it this way because technology is still relatively slow. That’s why sports in the present day only allow for a limited number of official challenges to the on-field call. Technological investigations take time, and in the spontaneous world of sports, that kind of spoils all the fun. So, for now, we limit our access to this digital assistance.

One day though, judgements from above (the technological kind) will be instantaneous. You won’t need to have a limit on challenges because, in effect, all of the calls will be instantly challenged, by the technology itself. It will simply compare what it sees with what it knows - or is told - to be true

At that point, what do we do with the information, since we already employ people on the field of play who are tasked with making those very same calls?

Should we have More or Less technology in officiating?

• More
• Less

While these arguments, at this point at least, may sound alarmist, they are entirely inescapable realities in the not-so-distant future. As the tech improves, the human part of the game will be minimized to the point of obsolescence. You only need to look at the rest of the world for evidence of that. With so many tasks today, computers are just better, faster, more accurate (and more diligent) than any human being will ever be.

In society that’s looked at as a win for some and a loss for others, but in the world of sports - a place, mind you, designed entirely on the concept of a fun yet competitive human event - we’re approaching the inevitable collision between perfection and imperfect humanity.

And ironically, in this case it will be the human beings who will ultimately decide who wins.

It's Over