Video Review Needs to Happen Now

[Tristan Lall]

Not much has changed in 11 years. People are still basically arguing that because it is impractical to have a perfect replay system, every replay system is detrimental or infeasible. But the point isn't to be perfect; the point is to be better.

Part of the process of implementing a replay system is establishing the rules for its use. If you're concerned that too many replays will slow down a regional, then limit the number of replays and the circumstances in which replays are available to teams. Maybe every team can have one replay in the qualifying matches, and one in the eliminations, and all the alliance partners have to spend their replays together. I would postulate that much of the benefit of a replay system is to give everyone the certainty that it's there in the rare occasions where it would clearly be beneficial—but making replays artificially scarce conveys the strong implication that they should be used wisely, and would put a tight cap on the likely quantity of delay. Obviously a good technical implementation would also serve to control delay.

Maybe a given replay scheme wouldn't address the rare situation where the referees are so terrible or overworked that nearly every match is questionable. But it would start to address the far likelier scenario that a team feels bad about an entire event (and perhaps the competition in general) because one major, game-changing call was blown. And even if the replay footage was inconclusive, the act of a review will serve to placate the team. Something was done, so it can't be as easily argued that the team is being ignored. And the team and the referee have an explicit common frame of reference to guide the conversation—even if the challenge is unsuccessful, that will cut down on speculation about motive or competence. In this way, the referees appear deferential instead of capricious (without compromising their authority), and it therefore makes the competition appear more credible.

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

Side note: If you have never volunteered as a referee, you got nothing to say.

I can't get behind that. Referees know that they're subject to scrutiny, and should expect commentary substantiated by fact. And competitors should not be made to feel like they're not welcome to contribute their assessments of the problem—because obviously it's they, and not the referees, that are most affected by officiating errors.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

I'm going to leave it at this. Find me one example of a student who changed career paths because of a blown call in a FIRST match.

This is clearly an unreasonable way of looking at the problem. What if the effect was subtle or not yet realized (e.g. the student doesn't rejoin the team the next year, and instead joins the chemistry club, which might, in a couple years, lead them to get a degree in science not engineering)? How would you propose to find such a student, given that this probably isn't a metric that anyone tracks?