COMMENTARY: Bring on the instant replay

c. 1999 Religion News Service (Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS.) UNDATED _ It hasn’t been the best spring. Natural disasters have hit unnaturally hard. We’re ambivalent about being involved in a war and confused about who is winning. We are afraid we don’t know what’s going on with our teen-agers and we’re pretty […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS.)

UNDATED _ It hasn’t been the best spring.


Natural disasters have hit unnaturally hard. We’re ambivalent about being involved in a war and confused about who is winning. We are afraid we don’t know what’s going on with our teen-agers and we’re pretty sure”intelligence”should be removed from the name of our top spy agency. We can’t seem to get rid of Monica and we’re beginning to think Hillary isn’t as smart as we thought she was.

I don’t know about your baseball team, but mine is so bad that when they played the Cuban team several of our players threatened to defect just to avoid the embarrassment of finishing the season.

All of this makes me long for fall.

I’m a football fan, you see, and ever since I heard that instant replay was coming back, I’ve been counting the days until I can watch a game without feeling someone has been robbed.

I love the security of waiting for the flurry of the moment to be slowed to a frame-by-frame view. I savor the victory of knowing that my instant analysis will be vindicated by a camera angle. And I will be glad when they stop giving acting lessons to football players and learn to live by the replay instead of the hype.

Come to think of it, I long for instant replay to settle the score on many games in life.

I am growing weary of television commentators and airtime filled with screeching. I don’t want to know what everyone thinks; I want to know what really happened. I want news shows to tell me the facts, not give me theories by people I wouldn’t talk to if they sat next to me on the subway.

I’m dizzy from all the spinning going on and agitated by the hype. Why is there so much talk and so few answers? I’d like to suggest that these 24-hour so-called news stations fire all their”experts”and use the money to hire a good reporter and camera crew. I want to see what’s happening, not hear about it.

We worry that our kids have lost touch with reality because they play video and computer games, but what about us grown-ups? Have we even noticed that non-stop chatter quickly eclipses most events?

I understand the need for some interpretation. Even when I’m watching football I like to hear one of those porked-out ex-players try to explain what in the world a coach was trying to pull when he left the wide receiver uncovered. That’s all harmless speculation by guys who are known to make such pithy comments as,”Heck if I know.” But the purity of instant replay is the joy of running the play over and over, forward and in reverse while the viewer and the commentator howl together.


Instant replay respects the player and the spectator. Instant replay offers some chance to get at truth.

The recent tornadoes in the Midwest made for horrifying but compelling footage. We watched the storm approaching through the lens of an amateur cameraman and felt the terror as the funnel cloud seemed to take over the horizon. We heard the horror in the voice of the helicopter pilot as his camera panned over a flattened neighborhood.

And mercifully, we did not have to listen to hour after hour of analysis of the event. What can you say about a disaster when the entire country has witnessed it?

I have a dream for a cable channel devoted to replays of sports and news events. Commentators would be allowed to say,”Wow”or”Can you believe that?”or other harmless comments, but no one would be allowed to talk about the psychological impact of the event or to use it as a springboard to sell their book. And under no circumstance would Monica Lewinsky ever be allowed to appear on the channel.

I have a dream that once we get instant replay back individuals will be empowered to claim their rights as spectators and viewers. That they will rise up and with one voice yell,”Shut up and let me just see what happened.” DEA END BOURKE

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