How much is too much technology in sports?

There's no question that instant replay has altered sports in a major way. But is there a limit to how much technology can be used in sports before it irreparably alters the game as we know it?

BY ERIC MANDEL

Oct 28, 2015, 3:17 PM Updated: 4:13 pm

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Instant replay is used in all of the major American sports, professional and college, and the ever-advancing technology has been met with varying degrees of satisfaction. (AP)

(AP)

There’s no question that instant replay has altered sports in a major way. But is there a limit to how much technology can be used in sports before it irreparably alters the game as we know it?

“Yes,” said Mike Salk Wednesday on “Brock and Salk.” “If it comes to a point where it becomes unrecognizable, but I don’t think we’ve hit it yet.”

Instant replay is being used in all of the major American sports, professional and college, and the ever-advancing technology has been met with varying degrees of satisfaction. Most recently, in Game 1 of the MLB World Series on Tuesday, the game was delayed seven minutes in the fourth inning, after Fox Sports lost power, meaning the umpires would have had no way of accessing their replay feed.

When looking at instant replay in baseball as a whole, Salk said he is a fan, but that there needs to be a limit.

“This whole idea of the micromanagement of when a guy pops off the bag for a split second after he is sliding in on a steal or a close play at the base, I think is a disaster,” he said. “That is not the way that rule was meant to be applied and I’m hoping that in the offseason (commissioner) Rob Manfred is able to do something about it, because I don’t think that is the point of instant replay.”

Salk said baseball has done a good job of recognizing areas that don’t need to be infiltrated by slow motion perfection, such as the “neighborhood play.”

“Nobody wants you to be exact around second base and get people injured on a double play,” Salk said. “We’re OK with the fact that that’s kind of a little iffy. It’s been accepted for years and generations, but we do want to make sure that a bang-bang play at first base is right. We do want to make sure that whether a ball is fair or foul is correct, because without it, it just feels phony. And nobody wants to lose on a call that blatantly phony. And I think the same is definitely true in the NFL.”

Danny O’Neil, filling in for Brock Huard, agreed that instant replay needs to be less about micro-managing every single play or action to the letter of the law, as much as keeping the flow of the game consistent. However, he said he believes technology has already burrowed its way too far into the NFL, specifically in terms of what constitutes a “catch.” O’Neil noted that instant replay was the impetus for all the confusion.

“Coaches didn’t like that if a guy catches the ball and firmly has it, but the instant his second foot comes down and he gets blasted, it is a fumble,” O’Neil said. “They didn’t like that as a fumble… They need to go back to that rule.”

There have been multiple high-profile examples of receivers catching the ball by general standards – controlling the ball and getting both feet in bounds – only to have instant replay reverse that rationale in any number of ways.

“It’s rooted in that ability to freeze it and then decide whether the catch is completed,” O’Neil said. “We’ve created that rule; the reactions to that have made it unrecognizable.”

Salk agreed, but said that the nebulous catch rules are “balanced out by all of the good things replay brings to the NFL.”

“Ultimately I know there are irritations,” Salk said. “I know that every week we have a new question and, certainly, what defines a catch seems to be the biggest of them because it’s constantly in flux and it often defies some of our logic. But, by in large, I think instant replay is a must-have in the NFL. There are just too many blatant mistakes made at the speed of that game that if they weren’t caught by instant replay, you would be so much more frustrated you are currently with the ‘what is a catch’ stuff.”

Salk added that he would ultimately prefer to see every play in the NFL as instant replay challengeable, including pass interference.

“I do not want them to challenge pass interference,” O’Neil responded. “Ever.”