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Abstract
There is a growing consensus in both academic and popular reflections on sport that if the accuracy of officiating can be improved by technology, then such assistance ought to be introduced. Indeed, apart from certain practical concerns about technologizing officiating there are few normative objections, and those that are voiced are often poorly articulated and quickly dismissed by critics. In this paper, we take up one of these objections – what is referred to as the loss of the human element in sport – and try to provide a firmer foundation for the disquiet that some feel at the threat of its loss. Briefly, it is argued that the cost of trying to eliminate all error in officiating through technological means is an understanding of sport as a practice through which human beings can reconcile themselves with the fallibilities and contingencies of life, in a forum where such losses can safely be experienced. After considering both practical and normative counter-arguments against the implementation of technology to correct officiating errors, we offer an argument that fallible officiating should be seen as desirable and that an attitude in sport that seeks to eliminate all wrong decision-making in officiating should be discouraged.
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Notes
1. For Collins (Citation2010), the question of justice and fairness also extends to the fans: that justice is seen to have been done is as important as the carrying out of just calls themselves.
2. This is, perhaps, why some referees feel inclined towards the make-up call, ‘the act of compensating for a questionable or bad officiating call by making a proportionally even call against the team that was aided by the first call’ (Hamilton Citation2011, 212). Righting the scales, so to speak, requires providing a similar advantage to the wronged team.
3. Nlandu (Citation2012) offers telling quotes from Arsene Wenger, the manager of Arsenal FC, who cites justice as a central concern for the incorporation of technology to correct (or replace) calls made by on-field officials.
4. As an example consider ‘Calvinball’ from the Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes.
5. One distinction we will pass over concerns intentionally breaking rules vs. accidentally breaking rules. Both forms of infraction if not enforced are detrimental to the integrity of the game, but intentional rule breaking may have a moral component which cannot be rectified by full enforcement of the rules. There are interesting questions to be pursued here about the ethics of so-called ‘professional fouls’.
6. An example of this concern for integrity can be seen in FIFA’s reluctance to include technology only at the highest level of professional soccer. As Ryall (Citation2012) reports, FIFA had hoped to protect the universality of the game at all levels by encouraging homogenous refereeing practices across all levels. Accordingly, FIFA once stated that they rejected the inclusion of goal-line technology at the highest levels of sport because to include it would create a disparity with the game as played at lower levels. Novice clubs cannot afford the necessary equipment to provide this level of scrutiny, and so clubs at the professional level ought not to have this technology in place.
7. Hawk-Eye’s website for instance admits an average error of 3.6 mm in adjudicating line calls in tennis, which is within the 5 mm average error parameter required by the International Tennis Federation. For an argument that ‘Hawk-Eye as used could inadvertently cause naïve viewers to overestimate the ability of technological devices to resolve disagreement among humans because measurement errors are not made salient,’ see Collins and Evans (Citation2008).
8. See for instance Fowler (Citation2013, 1).
9. Section VII, Rule 230 of the International Association of Athletics Federation defines Race Walking as ‘a progression of steps so taken that the walker makes contact with the ground, so that no visible (to the human eye) loss of contact occurs. The advancing leg shall be straightened (i.e. not bent at the knee) from the moment of first contact with the ground until the vertical upright position.’ See the Racewalking Association website at http://www.racewalkingassociation.org.uk/Rule230.html.
10. This position was reached after the 1980 Olympics in which new electronic timing ruled that Thomas Wassberg defeated Juha Mieto by a mere 1/100 of a second in the men’s 15 km. (Given the closeness of the race, Wassberg proposed to Mieto that they cut their gold and silver medals in half and meld the halves together as two hybrid medals. Mieto declined.)
11. See also McFee (Citation2004, 104).
12. Though it should be recognized that there may be cases where players might not call for a review of shots they believe to be out since doing so would require them to give up on a continuing rally.
13. Indeed, statistics indicate that a significant number of calls made by tennis umpires do not track the truth. Maher’s research shows that during the 15 ATP tennis tournaments in 2006 and 2007, 8.2% of line calls were shown to be incorrect, and 39.3% of challenged line calls were overturned. In response to such figures, strategies have recently appeared in the literature as to when players should challenge calls. For instance, Pollard et al. (Citation2010) show that challenge decisions are based on the rate at which challenges occur, the expected number of points remaining in the set, the number of challenges remaining in the set, the probability of the challenge decision being successful and the importance of the point to winning the set.
14. Similar compromises are seen in other sports. In the NFL, for instance, coaches are allowed two challenges per game. If both challenges are successful the team is given a third challenge. If a challenge is unsuccessful however then the team is penalized by losing one of their timeouts. In addition, coaches may not challenge any on-field occurrence in the final two minutes of play, as this might be a way of getting additional timeouts in the final seconds of the game; instead, all plays are subject to review in the final two minutes, as a fourth – off field – official deems necessary.
15. See Royce (Citation2012, 57) for similar comments regarding the difficulty in correcting missed or mistaken calls in games without natural stoppage points.
16. NFL Rulebook (Citation2015), Section 15 Article 2. http://operations.nfl.com/the-rules/2015-nfl-rulebook/#rule-15.-officials-and-instant-replay. The arbitrariness of the review system has been recognized by those steeped in the sporting atmosphere as well. Michel Platini, for instance, has been quoted as suggesting that the use of goal-line technology but not other technology (e.g. for offside calls) is problematic, and that rather than draw arbitrary boundaries as to when and where to use technology in reviews there is merit instead to using additional on-field officials (Warshaw Citation2008).
17. Mumford gestures towards this somewhat when he says that ‘we exist as physically embodied beings: causal agents and patients in the world. We manipulate things and suffer changes done to us’ (Citation2012, 136). So too does Simon, when he says ‘Moreover, [a fluke] may promote a desirable degree of humility among even the most successful athletes and create an appreciation for the often arbitrary contingencies that can affect human life’ (Citation2007, 16). We do not believe that these authors push the claim far enough though, and they have a lesser conception of our passive nature than we discuss.
18. For a discussion of one possible way of determining the optimal ludic balance, see Loland where he discusses the ludic balance in terms of uniting people together in morally valuable ways, premised on values of ‘human freedom, potential and possibility’ (Citation2002, 140).
19. See also Mumford (Citation2012, 94) and Simon (Citation2007, 16–17).
20. See also Feezell (Citation2001, 11).
21. One commentator referred to this problem as ‘goblin luck’: our position seems to suggest that the presence of a goblin who randomly intervenes in the game would be welcomed. After all, it would be incredibly unlucky to be subject to the whims of this goblin – but being so subject would allow us to better embrace our passive-subjectivity.
22. The strong version has been called Formalism. For a discussion of Formalism, see McFee (Citation2004, 33–52).
23. As an example of the sort of threshold controversies this can give rise to, consider the American Football Conference Championship Game played January 18, 2015. There, the New England Patriots played half the match (until the violation was discovered at half time) with balls which were underinflated according to regulations.
24. The appeal to weak integrity also defends against the objection from goblin luck (see footnote 21): The goblin would surely change the game too much for it to count as the same game; its (weak) integrity has been undermined.