Poll-Video Replay

[logank013]

I love seeing this friendly debate. It is great to see both sides of the issue and handle it as needed. While putting my opinion of "Is FIRST really a sport" to the side, I'm going to compare this game to soccer. Here's a little background of me and soccer. I'm an official grade 8 soccer referee. I have refereed soccer for 5 seasons and I've noticed a few things when refereeing soccer and decided that things can't be too different.

In my soccer referee games, there are times I wish I had video replay. When I referee 8-10 year olds, it is only 1 referee on the field at once. It's impossible to keep your eye on the ball all the time as a referee. Sometimes a kid falls and you need to make sure they are ok. Sometimes you need to look behind you when running backwards to make sure you don't plow a little kid. Sometimes during these distracted moments, the ball gets kicked out and I have to make a guess about who has the throw in. My point is, if you aren't looking at the play, how are you expected to make the right call?

In this game, it's a little different than soccer. 5 referees. 6 robots. 18 boulders. 10 goals. 10 defenses. Lots of fouls to look for. My point is this game is complicated. With 5 referees and if each covers 1 robot, 1 robot isn't being looked at during any given time. Each time something is scored, they have to hit it into their tablet as scored. No stops to do that. The reason for bad calls in this game is because there are just so many things for referees to get distracted at while refereeing a match.

My comparison: FRC is super complicated. If there is a foul in my soccer game, I stop the game and explain the foul. If there is a foul in FRC, the referees waves a flag and has to enter that in withOUT stopping the match. If the ball goes out of bounds in soccer, the game is stopped and I make an educated guess on who has the ball. In FRC, all of a sudden a robot that was in the neutral zone when you looked down is now in the courtyard when you look up, you have to make a guess about which defense was crossed.

In a game like soccer, I see video replay as important. It tells which foot touched the ball when it went out of bounds. It could be used to see where a ball should be placed. In FRC, we can use it to see which defense was crossed. If a robot was actually on the batter or not. We could use it to see what errors were made in scoring auton.

The video replay isn't to tell the referees they are doing bad. It's a tool I think they would find useful. I'd find it really useful in moments I get distracted in soccer. So why wouldn't an FRC referee find it useful for when they get distracted?

I agree with one post I saw earlier. Video replay shouldn't be used to negotiate fouls. Fouls are typically an opinion thing. The video would be perfect for things that are quantitative like defense crossings that are a definite yes or no thing.

Hopefully my comparison made sense to you all, but video replay if used correctly should make teams, referees, and spectators happy. There is no loss in using video replay (except money because that of live archive tool needs).