Video Review Needs to Happen Now

[CVR]

I think the root cause of this issue is that people think there are "bad" referees that miss calls. That may be true, but fixing a bad system by introducing a new system isn't a great fix. Instead people should focus on a direct fix.

If everyone who's posted in this thread volunteered to referee, head refs would have their pick of referees. They could staff events with "good" refs instead of "bad" refs. The problem is that events can't really be selective in who they get to ref it. Some events may only have 5 applicants for the 5 ref positions. This means if one ref is known to be prone to missing calls, the event has no choice, they have to play them. If events had 10 refs volunteer for 5 positions, they would be able to select their "favorite" 5 (or 7).

So if you really want better calls, the best way to make is happen is to volunteer as a referee. Anyone who is complaining should get on VIMS right now, sign up for a week 4, 5, or 6 event and start the ref training immediately. Although it can't do anything for the event you're complaining about, you have the chance to make someone else's season much better. And then volunteer next year! You may take the spot of that really great ref, and now that they don't have to do a week 2, 3, 4, and 5 event, maybe they are willing to cover your week 1 event!

If events are able to have their pick of referees and can choose the most capable refs, and there are still problems, then I think that might be a good time to talk about video review. But getting more volunteer refs is a simpler, cheaper, more direct, and overall better approach to solving the issue of bad calls. A video review system is going to need more volunteers at the same training level as refs anyway, so why not just have more refs?