Replacing Sports Referees With Technology?

dividedsky319 asks: "There have been numerous instances in which fans of a sporting team blame the loss of a game on the refs. Yet, nowadays, technology could replace a lot of what referees do. A sensor in a baseball could determine a ball or a strike. Same with a tennis match, the ball is either in or out. A sensor in a football could determine whether the ball moved forward 10 yards for a first down. Why hasn't this happened, yet? Obviously not all calls can be determined by technology, but it is feasible for certain instances. What would be the ramifications if something like this WAS introduced, and why has it taken so long?"

Comments

Photo finish

[Kelson]

So, how old is the phrase "photo finish," anyway?

The human factor makes the game

[bluGill]

The human factor of umpires that are failable make the game. Despite a few who are dishonest, most officials try their best to be fair, even when it is against the team they want to win.

I don't want to see robots play sports. In theory (the Jetson's universe) watching robots play is just a case of waiting to see who's bearings wear out sooner.

Now in amateur sports a robot ump would be nice. When it is just me and someone at my level on the racquetball court it would be nice to have something that knew all the rules to tell them to us, not to mention call violations where neither of us know that rule. However I cannot afford to pay for a device to call racquetball games, nor could I afford membershim in a gym that would have it.

Re:The human factor makes the game

[Mumbly_Joe6432]

The errors of unpires and referees are simply a part of the game. In a lot of sports, getting away with a foul is a very important part of the contest, and plus, missed calls can make things more interesting.

In FIFA, (the worldwide soccer group that controls the rules, international play, etc.) they have seriously considered having a sensor that detects whether the ball is over the goal line or not. While some people think this would be good for the game, others, like me, wonder where it would stop. The referees are good at what they do, and most of them do a good job. Yes, a robot could do better, but as the technology improves, we would simply have robots judge more and more of the games. If we had a robot detecting every foul, the game of soccer would not exist. For those of you who have never watched a game of soccer, at a skilled level of play, it seems like everyone is pulling somone else's jersey throughout the entirety of the match, yet it is almost never called. If they weren't allowed to do this, it would completely change the game.

For those of you who shun soccer, consider (American) football. How many holding/clipping penalties do referees miss? I'd bet that if a robot referee refed a game, they would stop every play. True, the players would get used to it and stop committing penalties, but again, that changes the game completely.

Re:The human factor makes the game

[Ondo]

Having a robot that called balls and strikes correctly instead of an ump would not reduce the "human factor" in baseball. It would merely make the pitcher who throws the ball the human determining the outcome, rather than the ump. How is that bad?

Re:The human factor makes the game

[Bogtha]

The human factor of umpires that are failable make the game.

No, the humans actually playing the game and competing make the game.

I don't want to see robots play sports.

And if anybody was suggesting that, your complaint might be valid. But we're talking about replacing referees. Those aren't the people playing the game.

Spectator Sport

[JAZ]

Since these are specator sports, it is not so much about right and wrong calls as it is about keeping the game interesting. If you don't have any bad calls to complain about, they you have to accept that your team lost because they weren't as good. As long as there are bad calls you can believe that your team had a chance, and you'll keep coming back to see their chances play out next week.

By keeping the human element in the officating, we keep the games interesting. You want to keep as much to talk about as you can... entire industries are created around this (Sports Radio is a major one).

You could run the whole game as a computer simulation, but it wouldn't be as interesting.

FIFA

[orasio]

FIFA is using a radio chip so the ball can say it scored a goal, in a football game (the sport you play with your feet).

This is an early announcement:
http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,1563,1 384236,00.html

They did use it for the Sub-17 World Cup, last month in Peru.
They refuse to use video, because they say it goes against the spirit of the game.

It's been rejected

[stereo_Barryo]

Tennis considered this about 10 (?) years ago and rejected it. Both players and administration agreed that the human element was part of the game and they wanted umpires, even with their bad calls (everybody makes mistakes, even the players). In baseball they have a Questek system for balls and strikes but it is used to judge the quality of the umpires (performance review monitoring by the admins) rather than for live action calls. Humans, and their mistakes, are part of the game.

Re:It's been rejected

[Buck2]

Questek has also not gone over very well. There have been complaints about the cameras being in different positions in different ballparks, not capturing the motion of the ball and/or the batter during the pitch, and the "sterilization" of the strike zone to name a few.

It's a good idea which wasn't implemented well enough, IMO.

Replace? or Augment?

[the phantom]

I do not think that we should be replacing referees with technology... there will always be things that are subjective, and that require a human intelligence. For instance, the modern sport of fencing is heavily dependant upon technology for scoring -- there are springs on the end of weapon, and fencers wear conductive clothing to help judges determine if a person has been hit or not. However, someone is still required to determine who had right-of-way, and should be awarded a point.

I do not think that you will ever be able to replace referees with computers -- there is too much in sport that requires subjective judgements. In baseball, did the batter step into a pitch in order to get a base, or was he trying to avoid getting hit? In horse racing, did one jockey intentionally jostle another, or not (and remember that horse racing gave us the phrase "photo finish" -- one of the first examples of technology in sport)? In hockey or football, was a certain action within the acceptable bounds of contact, or does it warrant penalty?

Additionally, technology is fallible. For instance, it takes a fair amount of work to keep a foil in order. Springs have to be able to take a certain load; wires break; blades break; screws get lost; and all of these things cost money to replace. I would imagine that the same would be true of any technology. Just how much of a beating can a sensor take before it is useless? How much would it cost to put a sensor in every baseball used in a game? How long would a sensor improved football last? And, would it really be worth it? Sure there are some games that are won or lost on controversial calls (see the White Sox, last week). However, is it worth the cost of putting a sensor in every baseball, when it is only going to really matter once in ten thousand pitches?

Anyway, fans love to hate officials :)

WHY?? BECAUSE IT'S AN F'N GAME!

[alta]

It's a game damnit. What's the fun in a computer saying, in it's best mac text-to-speach voice, YOU ARE OUT.

And the fun of fighting with the ref. I think baseball is boring, but it has some of the best ref' fights. I love it when the ref throws out the coach. What's the coach going to do to the computer? Spit on it?

And when I'm sitting around on the couch, watching a game, and we aren't all for the same team, it's great to fight over if the ball was in or not.

I can see the water fountain conversations the next day. "Hey, did you see that call the computer made? Well, it must have been right, but I sure didn't appreciate it!"

Re:who cares?

[fishybell]

I do.

That's what lets me, in my comfortable easy chair, forget about the bad things I can't do anything about.

If people were constantly stuck in oh-my-god-the-world-is-a-bad-place mode, would the world be a better place? Not likely.

Do we yell at the programmers now?

[Grayden]

Yelling at "incompetent" referees is half (or more) of the fun of sports!

Else printf "You're Out!"

[reverseengineer]

I think there are some instances in sports officiating that could be handled by automation- as the submitter noted, electronic sensors could handle in/out line calls better than human eyes. Simple yes/no type answers are the forte of computers, after all. However, many snap decisions made by human referees are too complex for computers for the forseeable future. With a computer and video camera/lasers/radar calling balls and strikes, for instance, the automated system has the huge advantage of consistency, with the same perfect strike zone called game to game, batter to batter, pitch to pitch. If all an ump had to do back behind the catcher is determine whether a given pitch passed through an imaginary rectangle while in flight over home plate, then umpires could easily be replaced. You'd never have managers running out to argue balls and strikes again. However, there's a lot of analog information that an umpire must process back there in addition to the binary strike call- check swings (and attempted check swings), balks, whether a player hit by a pitch actually made a legitimate attempt to avoid the ball.

Similarly, in football (American-style), an couple of sensors can determine whether the football was advanced ten yards or whether it broke the plane of the goal line, but you'd need an army of them to determine whether a runner was down by contact before fumbling, when a play ended exactly based on halting a runner's forward progress, whether a penalty like roughing the passer or holding or pass interference occurred. Computers aren't well suited to judging human behavior, so it may be difficult for them to determine whether to determine whether a foul was "flagrant," a player deserves a red card vs. a yellow card. If human beings are still necessary on the field of play in order to make judgement calls, then why bother bringing in technology in the first place?

Now, there are some avenues in which technological innovations could improve officiating. I generally like the use of instant replay in sports, and think systems like the NFL and NBA have in place (that in essence leave the mundane calls to refs on the field, but make video review available for important plays or last-second shots) work well, but they can only reduce, not eliminate bad calls. I think embedded sensors in a few places on the playing field could offer a trove of useful information for making calls- for example, if there were a sensor embedded in the dirt in front of home plate that checks for the ball making contact with the ground on strike three, that Pierzynski play in Game 2 of the ALCS may have been called differently. Or maybe not. The more electronic technology you put on the playing field, the more likely it becomes that a call gets screwed up due to something like low sampling rate in a sensor, transient electromagnetic interference, or an error in a computer program. Besides, as other posters have already pointed out, the occasional disputed call is a part of sports themselves- and we get far more to talk/argue about from blown calls than for perfect ones.

No Just update tech

[Uosdwis]

One thing I am complaining about, with and without beer is the frame rate of cameras. Why use 24/30 fps? Did we learn nothing from bullet time? Bump that up to about 100fps, certainly doable. Why? how many times are calls flubbed because a tennis or baseball moving 80mph? A receiver moving a foot to damn fast?

Also what about the chains for football, that is all dog & pony. You're gon'na sit there and tell me that a guy trotting down the field holding a chain is better than GPS? I know the ball placement is more art than science but not measuring distance.

Fastrax was dumb but the idea of cameras following the puck autonomously was freak'n cool and highlighting against the close boards was ok just not a good as a talented director switching camera angles. The other highlighting was ugly and annoying.

strike calling tech in baseball

[rlwhite]

Baseball tried something similar. They decided a few years ago that they'd use a computer system (Questec) to "grade" umpires' strike zone accuracy, and then tie the grading to personnel decisions.

The system works by lining up tracking devices/cameras around a predetermined zone. Big problem. The strike zone is defined "from the bottom of the batter's knees to the midpoint between his shoulders and belt as he stands in a habitual crouch." This varies from batter to batter, it varies by the batter's stance; it can't be predetermined. Even instantaneously, it's a judgement call when a 90+ mph pitch is passing by. Then there's the matter that the strike zone is meant to be called as the ball goes over the plate. The strike zone isn't a plane at the front of the plate like many casual fans think. It's a solid volume floating above the pentagonal home plate. When pitchers are throwing good curveballs and sliders, that's very tough to get right, even for a machine.

When the system first came out, it was only in a handful of parks (7? out of 30). Umpires immediately tried to adapt to the system, trying to predict what their zone needed to be to agree with often-flawed calibrations. Games in those parks were way out of the norm for awhile. Players threw tantrums (and Curt Schilling actually broke a machine) protesting the system. Now the system is in many more parks (~23) and the system is no longer in the spotlight. I believe the umps actually negotiated on what the system could and couldn't be used for (ie, personnel decisions) in their last labor agreement.

There's an editorial from the original roll-out at http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59284, 00.html, and an inside view from an operator at http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?arti cleid=3326 (not sure if this is a premium article, if you can't get to it sorry)

Soccer less popular because...

[jvj24601]

My theory as to why soccer hasn’t acheived higher popularity in the US:

In the three major American sports (basketball, baseball, and football), it’s possible to go from being behind (in the score) to being ahead in one single play: think Pujols the other night, Adam Vinatieri frequently, or Kobe burying a three. That kind of emotional swing, from losing to winning or winning to losing, is unavailable in soccer and hockey (though hockey has fighting to keep me entertained).

If soccer could conceive of some way to earn two points on a single goal (a larger box outside the current penalty box?) to earn that emotional swing, perhaps there would be more interest.

I’ve only starting watching soccer because my son plays on two teams - we watch games together. And high-quality play from international teams are most definitely enjoyable. But if the team you’re rooting for is down by two goals with 90 seconds left, the game is over.