Why does NFL Replay suck so bad?

Courtesy of my friend Eric comes this terrific rant about NFL replay.


I am I the only one who is sick of the NFL replay system? I'm amazed that The Sports Guy hasn't written a 5000 word diatribe on it yet. Maybe it's because I'm so anxious to get my players on the field, but it seems like almost every NFL game is 3 minutes of frustration for every 1 minute of action.

First off, it takes too long. Why does it take the officials 5+ minutes to determine what the viewer can figure out in 15 seconds? Ok, sometimes it's close and requires a second angle - 30 seconds. I know they have to figure out down/distance/time, but that's not exactly Euclidean geometry. With my trusty abacus, I can usually get pretty close in about 6 seconds.

Last night takes the cake and it's not the first time I've seen it. Bears run a fake punt (horrible call, BTW) and is apparently incomplete. As they are cutting to commercial, it's clear that the Bears are challenging because it looked like he caught it. So, of course, they do NOTHING during the commercial break and wait until we come back to even START the process. 5 minutes later, we get a decision.

Why oh WHY can't we just have an official sitting in the booth constantly reviewing everything? It should take 1-2 replays tops to review each play and they can just buzz down to Mike Carey and TELL him the correct call, rather than him having to announce the challenge, run all the way across the field and don the head gear, stare into a box for 5 minutes, run all the way back and announce the result. Take the red flag out of the coaches hand - Andy Reid alone has cost me about 2 hours of my life wasted on calls that weren't even close - make the process more efficient and review many more plays, ensuring a more accurate outcome.

I guess I'm actually less outraged about the process than I am that, with all the voices in the sports talk media/blogosphere and the need to constantly whine about something, no one seems to be taking up this cause. Between horrible coaching decisions, terrible play calls, commercials after almost every play ("SAAAAAAVE BY ZEEEROOOOOOOO") and brutal replay stoppages, I find myself wanting to jab rusty railroad spikes up my nose every Sunday.