Just a small note to add to all this, but in my experience, people are either mad (to some degree) at the GDC for a boring or broken game, or they're mad at the refs for not calling every perceived penalty.
If a game is exciting, a lot of times that means there is A LOT going on. Given that most of the time you're looking at a team of 4-6 refs + head ref, that's a lot to look at when refs have to do some amount of scoring, while also calling penalties. To make matters worse, those penalties aren't always in the same place. Penalties can occur behind the driver's station, right in front of you, over in the spy box, across the field, heck even after the match!
More to the point of this thread - yes video review is used extensively for all other sports for making the right calls. Think about it this way, the average football game would last according to google:
"An average professional football game lasts 3 hours and 12 minutes, but if you tally up the time when the ball is actually in play, the action amounts to a mere 11 minutes."
11 minutes of play turns into
3 hours and 12 minutes. I'm fairly certain that if we reviewed video every time someone had a complaint or saw something that they felt a ref missed, regionals would take upwards of a week. Or you'd get about 4 matches total out of the whole thing.
I'm not saying the system is perfect and to leave it alone, I'm just saying that instead of kicking and screaming about not getting your way, propose a reasonable solution.
side note to the line in the original post for the thread about ruining the chances of some very deserving students -- were the students on the opposing alliance not deserving? I think everyone is deserving, but please be GP!