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Technology

Replacing Sports Referees With Technology? 72

Posted by Cliff from the technology-isn't-always-perfect dept.
dividedsky319 asks: "There have been numerous instances in which fans of a sporting team blame the loss of a game on the refs. Yet, nowadays, technology could replace a lot of what referees do. A sensor in a baseball could determine a ball or a strike. Same with a tennis match, the ball is either in or out. A sensor in a football could determine whether the ball moved forward 10 yards for a first down. Why hasn't this happened, yet? Obviously not all calls can be determined by technology, but it is feasible for certain instances. What would be the ramifications if something like this WAS introduced, and why has it taken so long?"
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Replacing Sports Referees With Technology? More

Replacing Sports Referees With Technology?

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  • Photo finish (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kelson ( 129150 ) * on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @05:21PM (#13821087) Homepage Journal
    So, how old is the phrase "photo finish," anyway?

  • The human factor makes the game (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @05:31PM (#13821204)

    The human factor of umpires that are failable make the game. Despite a few who are dishonest, most officials try their best to be fair, even when it is against the team they want to win.

    I don't want to see robots play sports. In theory (the Jetson's universe) watching robots play is just a case of waiting to see who's bearings wear out sooner.

    Now in amateur sports a robot ump would be nice. When it is just me and someone at my level on the racquetball court it would be nice to have something that knew all the rules to tell them to us, not to mention call violations where neither of us know that rule. However I cannot afford to pay for a device to call racquetball games, nor could I afford membershim in a gym that would have it.

    • The errors of unpires and referees are simply a part of the game. In a lot of sports, getting away with a foul is a very important part of the contest, and plus, missed calls can make things more interesting.

      In FIFA, (the worldwide soccer group that controls the rules, international play, etc.) they have seriously considered having a sensor that detects whether the ball is over the goal line or not. While some people think this would be good for the game, others, like me, wonder where it would stop. The
      • How many holding/clipping penalties do referees miss?

        At least one on every play :)

        If you ever have a chance to watch an american football game and consider the close calls that are shown on TV (where they are right most of the time on the field) are done in real time by a small team of people - it's amazing how many of them they get right.

        It's the ones that they get wrong (and badly, game-changingly wrong) that suck.

      • How many holding/clipping penalties do referees miss?
        The ones that actually affect the outcome of the play, or ones that happen 15 yards from the ball and have no bearing at all on the offense making forward progress?
    • Having a robot that called balls and strikes correctly instead of an ump would not reduce the "human factor" in baseball. It would merely make the pitcher who throws the ball the human determining the outcome, rather than the ump. How is that bad?
      • You're assuming the "Strike Zone" in baseball is a fixed area that does not change. You're wrong.

        The rule of thumb is from the belt to the knees (or letters to the knees), and over the plate. This changes for every player. But what about the guy whose wheel house (prime hitting area) is just below the knees or just above the letters. The ump has a little leeway as to what is and isn't a strike.

        What about the 41 year old hall of fame bound pitcher who's two strikes away from his first ever perfect game, in a

      • Having a robot that called balls and strikes correctly instead of an ump would not reduce the "human factor" in baseball.

        Perhaps if baseball was a brand new sport. The strategies of pitcher trying to expand the zone, catchers trying to make a ball look like a strike, and batters trying to squeeze the zone are all part of the game. It's hard to remove a factor like that in a game that's over a century old. People still argue about the designater hitter 30 years later.

    • The human factor of umpires that are failable make the game.

      No, the humans actually playing the game and competing make the game.

      I don't want to see robots play sports.

      And if anybody was suggesting that, your complaint might be valid. But we're talking about replacing referees. Those aren't the people playing the game.

    • >I don't want to see robots play sports.
      >In theory (the Jetson's universe) watching
      >robots play is just a case of waiting to
      >see who's bearings wear out sooner.

      Now that you mention it, I *do* want to watch robots play sports. (But then, I can't imagine wanting to watch humans play sports. . . so perhaps I'm missing something in this discussion.)

      After all, what can you hope to see in a human game? Someone throws a ball a little bit faster than usual, or someone does something dumb but not partic
    • Well then, fencing has been unmade. Fencing traditionally required 5 judges to judge 2 players fencing. With technological tools, it requires one judge. I don't see how that's a bad thing.

  • Spectator Sport (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JAZ ( 13084 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @05:31PM (#13821210)
    Since these are specator sports, it is not so much about right and wrong calls as it is about keeping the game interesting. If you don't have any bad calls to complain about, they you have to accept that your team lost because they weren't as good. As long as there are bad calls you can believe that your team had a chance, and you'll keep coming back to see their chances play out next week.

    By keeping the human element in the officating, we keep the games interesting. You want to keep as much to talk about as you can... entire industries are created around this (Sports Radio is a major one).

    You could run the whole game as a computer simulation, but it wouldn't be as interesting.
    • Well, not just that but you still, well, let's take American Football for instance, you'd need a ref down there to be a sort of "Field General" to relay the results of the computer tracked ball to the players, plus someone in a booth reading off the results, also you'd need refs down on the field to spot things like PI, encroachment, offsides, all sorts of other things.. There just has to be people on the field judging the game.. This goes for most sports... how about a runner heading to second base and get
      • not to mention that all these sensors would have to be tamper proof so a player or someone else couldn't "accidentally" damage them or make them malfunction. not to mention that they could be vulnerable to a hacker who has a large bet on one of the teams.

  • FIFA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by orasio ( 188021 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @05:34PM (#13821250) Homepage
    FIFA is using a radio chip so the ball can say it scored a goal, in a football game (the sport you play with your feet).

    This is an early announcement:
    http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,1563,1 384236,00.html [guardian.co.uk]

    They did use it for the Sub-17 World Cup, last month in Peru.
    They refuse to use video, because they say it goes against the spirit of the game.

    • Re:FIFA (Score:2, Funny)

      by SoCalChris ( 573049 )
      the sport you play with your feet

      You mean soccer?

      • Re:FIFA (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by orasio ( 188021 )
        Not "soccer".
        Little girls in the US play "soccer".
        "Football", or "fútbol" is the game where you use your feet to kick a ball, and several other parts of your opponent's anatomies (that's one of the differences with "soccer", the kicking).

        • Re:FIFA (Score:2, Troll)

          by Richard Steiner ( 1585 )
          It's true that soccer is not yet a very popular men's sport in the US, at least above the college level, and despite multiple attempts to create and publicize professional leagues.

          Since international "football" doesn't have the level of intense strategy found in American football, the speed of hockey or lacrosse, the level of athleticism found in basketball, or the intense one-on-one element of tennis or even baseball, I really don't see its status in the US changing any time soon.

          I do like watching it at t
          • It simply doesn't have much of a history here...

            And it's boring.
            • My theory as to why soccer hasn’t acheived higher popularity in the US:

              In the three major American sports (basketball, baseball, and football), it’s possible to go from being behind (in the score) to being ahead in one single play: think Pujols the other night, Adam Vinatieri frequently, or Kobe burying a three. That kind of emotional swing, from losing to winning or winning to losing, is unavailable in soccer and hockey (though hockey has fighting to keep me entertained).

              If soccer coul
              • One of my younger brothers played sweeper in back high school (which got me interested in the sport initially -- well that, and watching the Minnesota Kicks playing at the old Met Stadium when the NASL was still around), and as I said before there are lots of things that I do appreciate in the game itself, but it's hard for me to maintain much interest in it due to a lack of presence/coverage here in the states.

                You might be onto something, though. Maybe something like a two point shot from way outside the
              • You are kinda right.
                FIFA made many changes in order to gain a more offensive play.
                A tie was worth 1 point and a win, 2 points, before.
                Now it's 3 for a win, so if you are winning one goal ahead, missing 90 seconds, you still have 2 points to care about.
                And you win or lose a championship because of those two points.
                Another thing is that in tournaments there is simple elimination, and games have a definition similar to basketball, where you can tie, but play extra time , with sudden death some times, or shoot
          • > the level of athleticism found in basketball

            Surely you jest.
            • >> the level of athleticism found in basketball
              >Surely you jest.

              Soccer playing males, have the chests of 10 year old girls.
            • He clearly doesn't understand the stamina required to run up and down the pitch for 45+ minutes without stopping. And you don't get any pansy time-outs or commercial breaks either.
          • I don't see it getting popular _on tv_ in the US, either.
            It looks like crap on TV. Plus, it has too low scores to keep your attention.

            On the other hand, it's a good game to practice. Everybody does it, in South America.
            Since we've been playing it since we were kids, we enjoy watching it.
            I'm really bad playing it, but I really enjoy playing it.
            Of course, it's good to watch the game you like,played by pros. But it's a game for the guy who plays it, not the guy who watches it.

            Another advantage it has, compared
            • "Another advantage it has, compared to other sports, is that it need little to none infrastructure, so poor kids can play it everywhere."

              I have heard that excuse given many times, and I still have to disagree. Soccer needs a ball, and optionally some goal area (only if you want to keep score). Likewise, baseball needs a ball, and a stick. Bases are optional, or can be landmarks (why does second base keep crawling away?) Mitts are very good for hard balls, but not needed (early american baseball didn't use m
              • First of all, it's not an excuse. It's an attempot to explain a fact.

                Futbol is actually very accesible to real poor kids.

                Great stars _do_ come from very poor places. Maradona, Tevez, are from very (very) poor places. In my country, Uruguay, most of them come from truly disadvantaged backgrounds, and many become stars in Europe. Of course, being poor is an incentive to try and shine in sports so you can make a living out of it, but in this sport I believe the thing that helps is that poor places can produce
  • spelling?

    Yeah. It's just not "traditional." You can pour millions of dollars looking into hi-tech ways to improve the players performance and whatnot, but if it doesn't appear on the surface to be the same old game consumers won't buy it. Supposedly.
  • Tennis considered this about 10 (?) years ago and rejected it. Both players and administration agreed that the human element was part of the game and they wanted umpires, even with their bad calls (everybody makes mistakes, even the players). In baseball they have a Questek system for balls and strikes but it is used to judge the quality of the umpires (performance review monitoring by the admins) rather than for live action calls. Humans, and their mistakes, are part of the game.

    • Re:It's been rejected (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Buck2 ( 50253 )
      Questek has also not gone over very well. There have been complaints about the cameras being in different positions in different ballparks, not capturing the motion of the ball and/or the batter during the pitch, and the "sterilization" of the strike zone to name a few.

      It's a good idea which wasn't implemented well enough, IMO.
    • Excuse me? Is this the same game of tennis that already has automated line calls and net calls?

      All games will use technology that's proven and effective, but it always needs a human on top of it to overrule obvious errors. Football (soccer) already has video replays to check on fouls. Cricket has the "third umpire", again for video replays.

      But it can't affect how the game works. In the case of tennis and baseball, I suspect the special balls to make this work will behave differently to "traditional" one

  • Replace? or Augment? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the phantom ( 107624 ) * on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @05:42PM (#13821333) Homepage
    I do not think that we should be replacing referees with technology... there will always be things that are subjective, and that require a human intelligence. For instance, the modern sport of fencing is heavily dependant upon technology for scoring -- there are springs on the end of weapon, and fencers wear conductive clothing to help judges determine if a person has been hit or not. However, someone is still required to determine who had right-of-way, and should be awarded a point.

    I do not think that you will ever be able to replace referees with computers -- there is too much in sport that requires subjective judgements. In baseball, did the batter step into a pitch in order to get a base, or was he trying to avoid getting hit? In horse racing, did one jockey intentionally jostle another, or not (and remember that horse racing gave us the phrase "photo finish" -- one of the first examples of technology in sport)? In hockey or football, was a certain action within the acceptable bounds of contact, or does it warrant penalty?

    Additionally, technology is fallible. For instance, it takes a fair amount of work to keep a foil in order. Springs have to be able to take a certain load; wires break; blades break; screws get lost; and all of these things cost money to replace. I would imagine that the same would be true of any technology. Just how much of a beating can a sensor take before it is useless? How much would it cost to put a sensor in every baseball used in a game? How long would a sensor improved football last? And, would it really be worth it? Sure there are some games that are won or lost on controversial calls (see the White Sox, last week). However, is it worth the cost of putting a sensor in every baseball, when it is only going to really matter once in ten thousand pitches?

    Anyway, fans love to hate officials :)
    • Just how much of a beating can a sensor take before it is useless? How much would it cost to put a sensor in every baseball used in a game? How long would a sensor improved football last? And, would it really be worth it? Sure there are some games that are won or lost on controversial calls (see the White Sox, last week). However, is it worth the cost of putting a sensor in every baseball, when it is only going to really matter once in ten thousand pitches?

      Uh, let's break down the costs and income from a ga

    • How much would it cost to put a sensor in every baseball used in a game?

      I imagine that could get expensive in a hurry, especially if you count all of the balls tossed into the crowd (especially those caught for the third out). If the balls got that much more expensive, players might start feeling pressure to put an end to a great public relations gesture.

      The payoff wouldn't be all that great. USUALLY, the ump is pretty consistant about the strike zone (no matter how many claim otherwise). The strike

  • because we like to see them judged by humans; it lends us the sense that we are wiser than machines. But it's changing, they use cameras, RFID chips for marathon runners (Thank you rosie, we now have 'rosie chips') so i think that as long as we have PEOPLE supervising the tech involved, we'll be a lot more comfortable. If it's announced by a person, it's still a human game.

    Besides... if we could replace the ref with a robot, what i want to know is, how soon can we replace some of the players?
    • I've worked as a referee (amateur soccer/football/whatever you want to call it). I got a hell of a lot more out of doing it than $20 for 90 minutes of my time. It's fun. You're basically in charge of a small team whose goal is to organize 22 other people's fun. Technology can help, but cutting human refs out of the game wouldn't be fair to the refs.

  • WHY?? BECAUSE IT'S AN F'N GAME! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alta ( 1263 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @05:52PM (#13821436) Homepage Journal
    It's a game damnit. What's the fun in a computer saying, in it's best mac text-to-speach voice, YOU ARE OUT.

    And the fun of fighting with the ref. I think baseball is boring, but it has some of the best ref' fights. I love it when the ref throws out the coach. What's the coach going to do to the computer? Spit on it?

    And when I'm sitting around on the couch, watching a game, and we aren't all for the same team, it's great to fight over if the ball was in or not.

    I can see the water fountain conversations the next day. "Hey, did you see that call the computer made? Well, it must have been right, but I sure didn't appreciate it!"

  • I'm not a sports nut, but one did give me this advice one time when I asked the same question:

    1) There is a players union that requires that referees be humans with certain salaries.
    2) To a sports nut, the human referees are just as much a part of the game as the coaches. Replacing the referees with machines would be like replacing the players with machines.
    • There's something perversely appealing about the image of a stadium full of robots watching a game played by robots, refereed by robots. Particularly if one assumes that these are simply programmed robots and not artificial lifeforms, it reaches literarily absurd levels of meaninglessness.
      • Now that's a wonderful image.

        A robot audience watching a robot marching band, waiting in line at robot run concession stands to purchase artificial food. Robot cheerleaders leading the robot audience in chants. Robots programmed to do "the wave" slightly out of sequence in order to achieve a human-like ripple. Robot bookies taking cash from robot sports betters. Robot mobs violently confronting the robot fans of the opposing team outside in choreographed fights before being handcuffed and carted away by
  • Eventually technology will replace refs. Maybe once it's 100% infallable, maybe before then.

    Soon enough technology will replace everything...including you and whatever it is you probably do!

    Patience my child! Mwuuuhahahahahaha!
  • long before electronic voting machines do. It's a sad commentary on what American's view as vitally important to their well-being.
  • Yelling at "incompetent" referees is half (or more) of the fun of sports!

  • Else printf "You're Out!" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by reverseengineer ( 580922 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @07:08PM (#13822224)
    I think there are some instances in sports officiating that could be handled by automation- as the submitter noted, electronic sensors could handle in/out line calls better than human eyes. Simple yes/no type answers are the forte of computers, after all. However, many snap decisions made by human referees are too complex for computers for the forseeable future. With a computer and video camera/lasers/radar calling balls and strikes, for instance, the automated system has the huge advantage of consistency, with the same perfect strike zone called game to game, batter to batter, pitch to pitch. If all an ump had to do back behind the catcher is determine whether a given pitch passed through an imaginary rectangle while in flight over home plate, then umpires could easily be replaced. You'd never have managers running out to argue balls and strikes again. However, there's a lot of analog information that an umpire must process back there in addition to the binary strike call- check swings (and attempted check swings), balks, whether a player hit by a pitch actually made a legitimate attempt to avoid the ball.

    Similarly, in football (American-style), an couple of sensors can determine whether the football was advanced ten yards or whether it broke the plane of the goal line, but you'd need an army of them to determine whether a runner was down by contact before fumbling, when a play ended exactly based on halting a runner's forward progress, whether a penalty like roughing the passer or holding or pass interference occurred. Computers aren't well suited to judging human behavior, so it may be difficult for them to determine whether to determine whether a foul was "flagrant," a player deserves a red card vs. a yellow card. If human beings are still necessary on the field of play in order to make judgement calls, then why bother bringing in technology in the first place?

    Now, there are some avenues in which technological innovations could improve officiating. I generally like the use of instant replay in sports, and think systems like the NFL and NBA have in place (that in essence leave the mundane calls to refs on the field, but make video review available for important plays or last-second shots) work well, but they can only reduce, not eliminate bad calls. I think embedded sensors in a few places on the playing field could offer a trove of useful information for making calls- for example, if there were a sensor embedded in the dirt in front of home plate that checks for the ball making contact with the ground on strike three, that Pierzynski play in Game 2 of the ALCS may have been called differently. Or maybe not. The more electronic technology you put on the playing field, the more likely it becomes that a call gets screwed up due to something like low sampling rate in a sensor, transient electromagnetic interference, or an error in a computer program. Besides, as other posters have already pointed out, the occasional disputed call is a part of sports themselves- and we get far more to talk/argue about from blown calls than for perfect ones.

  • No Just update tech (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Uosdwis ( 553687 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @07:09PM (#13822240) Journal
    One thing I am complaining about, with and without beer is the frame rate of cameras. Why use 24/30 fps? Did we learn nothing from bullet time? Bump that up to about 100fps, certainly doable. Why? how many times are calls flubbed because a tennis or baseball moving 80mph? A receiver moving a foot to damn fast?

    Also what about the chains for football, that is all dog & pony. You're gon'na sit there and tell me that a guy trotting down the field holding a chain is better than GPS? I know the ball placement is more art than science but not measuring distance.

    Fastrax was dumb but the idea of cameras following the puck autonomously was freak'n cool and highlighting against the close boards was ok just not a good as a talented director switching camera angles. The other highlighting was ugly and annoying.

    • I totally agree with using high(er) speed film for instant replays. Slow-mo has had its day. What with the general import of instant replays in the NFL it seems ludicrous they are still flipping back and forth from one frame to the next where the guy is in the air, on the ground, in the air, on the ground ... INCONCLUSIVE. What a joke.

      Also, as far as the chains go, the chain guys don't screw up. There is a marker they put on a yard line to set the chains properly. What's ludicrous about that whole proc
    • Also what about the chains for football, that is all dog & pony. You're gon'na sit there and tell me that a guy trotting down the field holding a chain is better than GPS? I know the ball placement is more art than science but not measuring distance.

      As someone else stated, it's not the chains that are ludicrous backwards technology, it's ball placement. Unfortunately, that is not replaceable by machines yet. Can it measure exactly where the football is? Of course. But you have to know where the ball is

  • Wait a minute. This term "Sports" is new to me. What does it mean? Does it correspond to my nerd-esque tendancies? Dictionary.com defines Sports as:
    1. Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively.
    2. A particular form of this activity.
    I'm still not understanding... Anyone help me out? What is this... "Physical activity"?
  • Hockey officals use video extensively to assist them, not to replace them.

    If a goal is disputed, the goal judge watches the video (usually from several angles) and decides if the goal is valid or not.

    Sometimes a ref misses a call and the game goes on, but the player is punished after officials had a chance to review the tapes [foxsports.com].

  • We're all forgetting here...we've been using technology in sports for decades! Sports have always been caught on tape. That process has been fine tuned pretty well all this time. I conceed that they could up the frame rate (as mentioned above). But come on; look at the progress since Mikey Mantle's day, when all was black and white and the score board on the bottom of the screen was just a group of white letters and numbers. Now we've got the little fox logo with the animated chart that shows you the entire

  • strike calling tech in baseball (Score:4, Informative)

    by rlwhite ( 219604 ) <rogerwh&gmail,com> on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @11:38PM (#13823919)
    Baseball tried something similar. They decided a few years ago that they'd use a computer system (Questec) to "grade" umpires' strike zone accuracy, and then tie the grading to personnel decisions.

    The system works by lining up tracking devices/cameras around a predetermined zone. Big problem. The strike zone is defined "from the bottom of the batter's knees to the midpoint between his shoulders and belt as he stands in a habitual crouch." This varies from batter to batter, it varies by the batter's stance; it can't be predetermined. Even instantaneously, it's a judgement call when a 90+ mph pitch is passing by. Then there's the matter that the strike zone is meant to be called as the ball goes over the plate. The strike zone isn't a plane at the front of the plate like many casual fans think. It's a solid volume floating above the pentagonal home plate. When pitchers are throwing good curveballs and sliders, that's very tough to get right, even for a machine.

    When the system first came out, it was only in a handful of parks (7? out of 30). Umpires immediately tried to adapt to the system, trying to predict what their zone needed to be to agree with often-flawed calibrations. Games in those parks were way out of the norm for awhile. Players threw tantrums (and Curt Schilling actually broke a machine) protesting the system. Now the system is in many more parks (~23) and the system is no longer in the spotlight. I believe the umps actually negotiated on what the system could and couldn't be used for (ie, personnel decisions) in their last labor agreement.

    There's an editorial from the original roll-out at http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59284, 00.html [wired.com], and an inside view from an operator at http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?arti cleid=3326 [baseballprospectus.com] (not sure if this is a premium article, if you can't get to it sorry)
  • Hawkeye technology is already being used in the UK for tennis and cricket. In tennis it is used to show where serves have been played, where shots have landed and for measuring the velocity of each shot.

    In cricket it shows the path of each ball from the bowler's hand to the ground and from the ground to the bat. It can measures the velocity at any point too. It's used quite often in tests by the 3rd umpire for LBW decisions. It works really well.
  • Really, it is time to let humans play and officiate human games, and video games can be governed by the technology. Remember baseball is a game of inches, and progress in the game's rules, technology, and fashion of play changes in only "inches" too. Really, think to yourself.... how many times have you said "Aw, we was robbed." as to "The ump called him safe, whatya gonna do?" I think it has to balance out, and no, I don't have time to fish the stats out of google or MLB to back 30 (-6 years for being
  • Any changes, even minor, to a ball or tool that sportsmen practice with relentlessly, would not be easily adopted by them.

    Take a tennis ball for example. Any electronics placed in it would modify the physics of the ball tremendously, and the players would be playing an entirely new game.

  • Having a computer/sensor determine if a ball was in vs. out, on the line vs. not, is fairly simple, but different sports require a different level of human judgement. A sport like figure skating requires more human judgement than a sport like tennis. I understand the need to make the correct call in sporting events. Organizations like the NFL are trying very hard to do this, but this leads to a problem. When the use of technology changes the way the game is played (i.e. coaches can contest a call via insta

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