College Baseball 360 » instant replay

Why The College World Series Should Not Use Instant Replay

Sean Stires — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:52:58 +0000

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By College Baseball 360 Editor Sean Stires

Have you been watching the race for the MLB Wildcard this month? If you’re a Boston Red Sox fan you have more likely been cringing than actually watching September baseball.

The races for the final AL and NL playoff spots has been great drama for sure, and those races are also exactly why the College World Series should NOT use instant replay as it plans to do in 2012.

Huh?

That’s right, it’s still the regular season, but Major League Baseball doesn’t just use instant replay on home run calls in the postseason, it uses replay in games 1-162 as well as in each and every postseason playoff and World Series game.

Home run calls will be up for review at the 2012 College World Series

College baseball’s (and ESPN’s) plan is to merely use replay for those 15 or so games at the CWS, but not during the Regional or Super Regional rounds of the NCAA Tournament, not during conference tournaments and not during the thousands of games that take place during the regular season.

The rationale is, the technology is in place at the College World Series, so why not use it? I get that argument, but I don’t agree with it.

The fact is, the outcry for change (especially in sports) always comes when the spotlight is the greatest. The spotlight is the greatest in college baseball when those eight teams pull up in their buses in Omaha.

What should have been called a home run during a North Carolina-Vanderbilt game at this year’s CWS was not ruled a home run and ESPN’s cameras caught it. The result?

Outcry.

Every game the Red Sox, Rays, Angels, Braves, and Cardinals have played this month has counted just as much as the ones they played in April and they count just as much as the ones they may or may not play if they make it to the postseason. Instant replay has been an option for each and every one of those games this month and throughout the season, but that is not the case for college baseball.

Go back to 2008. The end of the story is “Wunderdog” Fresno State celebrating a national championship by defeating Georgia at the College World Series, but the journey started well before that.

Fresno had lost three straight with two games left to go in the regular season before it finally clinched the WAC regular season crown. The Bulldogs had to win the WAC postseason tournament just to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. Contrary to what some in the NCAA would tell you, those four WAC Tourney games FSU won are postseason games and they all counted just as much as the two at the end of the regular season and the seven combined Regional and Super Regional games they played before the Bulldogs ever got to Omaha.

While they count just as much, instant replay would not have been an option in any of those games.

How about this year’s SWAC and Mountain West Conference postseason tournaments? Alcorn State and New Mexico, respectively, won those tourneys with losing records. If they hadn’t won their tournaments they wouldn’t have received an NCAA bid. Are those games less important than games in Omaha?

I know, those games are not all televised and therefore replay is not an option, but that doesn’t make the ones that are televised more important…this isn’t the Little League World Series (don’t get me started).

The reason instant replay should not be used at the CWS is the same reason the top college baseball players cannot afford to take a day off during the regular season-

Every game counts.

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Around The Bases Nov. 19

Sean Stires — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:21:19 +0000

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Four Things I’m Thinking About Right Now

By Collegebaseball360.com Editor Sean Stires

1. College football’s Doak Walker and Biletnikoff Awards could both go to guys who also play college baseball. If you have followed our Two Sport Reports so far this season you know that Stanford’s Toby Gerhart and Notre Dame’s Golden Tate are among college baseball players who have excelled on the gridiron this fall.

Gerhart’s 1,395 rushing yards are currently the third most in the nation, while Tate is fourth in the land with 1,172 receiving yards. Tate has scored a total of 14 touchdowns (11 receiving, 2 rushing & 1 punt return), while Gerhart has rumbled across the goal line 19 times. Tate needs just 78 more receiving yards to break current Chicago Cubs pitcher Jeff Samardzija’s Notre Dame single season receiving school record.

Gerhart batted .288 with 7 home runs and 36 RBIs for the Cardinal in 2009. Tate hit .329 with 13 stolen bases and scored 45 runs at the top of the Irish line-up last season.

Both were also just named Walter Camp Player of the Year semifinalists. The duo goes head to head when Notre Dame visits Stanford on Nov. 28th in the regular season finale for both teams.

2. I talked a little about schedules last week, and I mentioned how Virginia’s first two weeks of 2010 will be challenging with three games each vs. East Carolina and Rhode Island. Well how about Rhode Island’s 2010 slate? Rhody opens the season with three games in Starkville, MS vs. Mississippi State and then heads to Charlottesville, VA for those three games against the Cavaliers the following weekend.

There’s a double edged sword for a northern team scheduling two such trips. The Pros: You’ll get guarantees for making the trips (needed revenue for teams that don’t get DI college football windfall), you’ll bump your strength of schedule and RPIs, you give your players exposure to great college baseball environments, and you have the chance to compete against and beat good competition. The Con: You need to win at least two games in a three-game series to get credit when it comes down to NCAA Tournament selection time.

I’ve talked to an NCAA selection committee member about this before. Winning just one of three games is essentially the same as losing all three games when it comes to selection. Teams from the north are better off scheduling just two games against an ACC or SEC team and hope for a split, but most teams from the south have no interest in that.

Jim Foster’s URI team won 37 games in 2009. They played single games against the likes of Miami, Oklahoma State, Ohio State and Boston College (all tourney teams), but they missed the NCAA Tournament. They still have a handful of “TBA” games in Winter Haven, FL to be added to the 2010 slate. We’ll see how things shake out…

3. I talked last week about guys flying below the radar in high school and then blossoming in college. There’s no better example than Middle Tennessee State’s Bryce Brentz. The 2009 Team USA outfielder who grew up in Knoxville is wearing blue instead of orange in college, and he’s wearing it well. As a sophomore last season Brentz led the nation with his .465 average, 28 home runs and .930 slugging percentage. Not bad for a guy who says he never thought much about playing for Tennessee because he was a “late bloomer”. MTSU has also won 71 games with a 2009 NCAA Regional appearance in Brentz’s first two years in Murfreesboro.

4. There’s been a lot of recent talk about revamping instant replay in Major League Baseball. Most of the talk, centered around umpiring mistakes that were made during the playoffs. People like Bob Costas are in favor of expanding replay during the playoffs, but not necessarily during the regular season. The reasoning is there are more cameras in use and the games mean more, so why not take advantage of the extra technology and make sure you get the calls right. Would you want that rationale applied to the College World Series? Those games are arguably the most important games of the college season, and they’re all televised by ESPN. Who’s to say they are really the most important games though? One could argue though that game three of a Super Regional is just as important as any game in Omaha, because you have to win there just to get to the promised land. While all Super Regional games are now televised there are not as many cameras in use there, and the angles are different, because the college stadiums are smaller than Rosenblatt Stadium.

Getting the calls right is the most important thing, but sometimes hairs are split by technology. Case in point: the Chicago Bulls vs. Denver Nuggets game last week. A last second shot initially looked like the Bulls won the game. However after ten minutes of replay review the shot was waved off and the Nuggets won. If it takes ten minutes to make the decision shouldn’t the initial ruling just stand?

College football has instant replay, but that system is far from perfect. Who hasn’t watched a college football game and scratched their heads at calls made on the field that are overturned even when video replays don’t indisputably support the decision to overturn them. Too often judgment in the replay booth replaces judgments made on the field, and that’s not how replay is supposed to be used.

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