Play It Again, Sam

The US-Slovenia game has started the ‘soccer should have instant replay’ dust-up that happens every so often. The outcry against common sense rests it’s argument on “tradition” and “the beauty of soccer is the controversy.” It gives me flashbacks to the introduction of instant replay in football.

Some of us used those very same arguments. I was new to the scene and didn’t have a strong opinion but remained wary. Now that instant replay is part of the fabric game, I can refute both arguments.

First: tradition. In the course of human history, it has been tradition to bleed people in hopes of curing the flu, take months for a message to cross the Atlantic, and for players to die on the field due to lack of protection. Technology has improved our lives, and we should take advantage of it.

As for lack of controversy: it’s been five seasons since we began using instant replay in the contemporary sense, and no one can claim the game has become a black hole of people behaving complacently, golf clapping, and accepting final scores like a Valentine. Oh no, controversy abounds.

But it’s controversy tempered with fairness. There is legitimacy to the claim that the US should have played better in the first half and never been in that position; we use that argument in football as well. It’s an un-American argument. We’ve got a tradition (oh, that word) of caring more where you finish than when you start. The Slovenia game was a microcosm of the American spirit: start behind the eight ball and pull yourself up by the boot strap. Unfortunately, this game added the modern truth that you’ll probably get screwed over anyway. However much we may deny the possibility of achieving the elusive “American Dream”, Americans believe in rewarding hard work despite any missteps along the way.

Anyway, to pull this back to football, let me refute a meme I’m absolutely sick of: football is inferior to soccer because it takes longer to play. Negatory. Football and soccer take about the same amount of time to play. What slows down football is the mucking of tv executives. Granted, the built in time stoppages make football more susceptible to commercial abuse, but that’s not against the sport. You can thank our capitalistic, consumerist society for that.

All that to say: instant replay is good and no more to be feared than that new-fangled smallpox vaccine.