Do we have the right to have perfection?

Is perfection possible in sports officiating?

Is it like Utopia, a place we try and hope to arrive at but we always fall short of getting there?

The disappointing end of the National Football League season brought this point home vividly, in the first playoff game. Our poor New York (New Jersey?) Giants were entitled to another field goal try but they did not get that opportunity. The referees missed the call of interference on a player who was eligible to receive a pass and the game passed on into history.

When the Giants head coach trotted contentedly across the field after the game I felt like screaming. Why didn't he make a fuss with the refs? He knew that he was in the right, or he should have known. "Do not go gently into that dark night!"

At least the Pittsburgh coach ran across the field in the Pittsburgh-Tennessee game and protested a call to the refs as they left the field. He did not let slide what he thought was a bad decision on their part. They had cost him the game and all he had worked for, for eight months, but he didn't just accept it without a tussle. I admired his gumption.

When I was playing basketball on the playgrounds of the Bronx we had a right to redress a call. If someone disagreed with a call, they could shout out, "Miscall." At that point the negotiations began!

It both served as a break in the action, where both sides could retrieve their breath and respiration, but a time and place for justice. No red handkerchief was tossed on the ground and no refs were present. The two parties would hammer out a just decision. Many a future lawyer was formed on the basketball courts of the Bronx.

Modern cinematic technology allows many views of the same action. Officials on the scene are usually correct but when they are wrong this film mechanism should be employed. Millions of dollars are bet (legally and otherwise). The fans also have a huge emotional stake in game-deciding plays. Why should their favorite team be robbed of a playoff chance by a missed call if there is a way to refute it on replay?

In NCAA basketball, cameras are now used to check the clock to see if a game-winning shot was taken (ball had to be in the air) within the actual time limit. It has been used quite a few times and settles the issue immediately.

Getting back to perfection. Judgment calls on the field by refs will always be part of the game. The human element should never be completely removed. I prefer balls and strikes being called by a living and breathing umpire rather than programming a machine to do the job. Linesmen in tennis also come under this line of thinking.

Referees are human beings!

Maybe these refs, umpires, linesmen, etc. should be allowed to review their own calls with the aid of television and film cameras. It is impractical and would take too much time but it would hopefully lead to more correct calls.

Another maybe! Maybe I am just teed off that my New York (New Jersey?) Giants lost an opportunity to win a playoff game that might have carried them to the Super Bowl XXXVII.