Higher Education

The fallout over the blown calls late in the Oklahoma-Oregon game on Saturday shows why I have always felt lukewarm, at best, regarding instant replay. I have always liked that human error -- that of players, coaches, and even officials or umpires -- contributes to the outcome of sporting events. Although no one can dispute that officials and umpires make bang-bang calls correctly nearly all of the time, with instant replay the standard -- especially in football where replay is firmly established -- now has become perfection. Well, obviously, even with instant replay, you will have mistakes, such as the ones that occurred on Saturday at such a critical time.

What is so depressingly predictable about this episode is that none of the alleged adults involved with the Oklahoma team appears able to act his age. We wuz robbed, OU officials say. No more games with Pac-10 officials when we have to play one of that league's teams, they demand. And university president (and former United States Senator) David Boren calls the blown calls an “outrageous injustice” that require the elimination of the game from the records books. Uh, hello? President Boren? This is an outrageous injustice. So is this. And this. There are a thousand more examples of real injustice just from today's news alone, and none of them has anything to do with a football game. How naive of me to think that a college president might attempt to use a situation like this as a means of teaching an important lesson.