A Philosopher’s Definitive (And Slightly Maddening) Case Against Replay Review

From James Darcy, writing in Deadspin:

The motivation for using video review in sports is obvious: to get more calls right. This seems like an easy enough mission to fulfill, but anyone who has spent even a little time watching sports on TV can attest to the fact that the application of video review is not so simple. In most sports where it is applied, video review has actually created more confusion and less clarity. Why is this the case? Follow me into an examination of thousands of years of philosophical discourse, and we will find the answer together, my friends.

The root problem with video review is that it is so often used to make decisions based on rules that contain an inherent level of vagueness. For example, according to the NFL’s current catch rule (Rule 8, Section 1, Article 3a) an inbounds player must secure “control of the ball in his hands or arms prior to the ball touching the ground” in order to complete a catch. The term “control” in that rule is vague. There are borderline cases of controlling a football, which means boundaries for when the term “control” can and can’t be applied are fuzzy ones.

Philosophers have been dealing with the problems posed by vagueness since at least the 4th Century BC, because the problems that vagueness causes aren’t limited to the NFL’s struggle with the catch rule. Vagueness also has important implications for metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and our understanding of the nature of truth and the foundations of logic.

There are a number of different philosophical approaches to vagueness that can be applied to the case of video review. The bad news is that once we understand these different approaches to dealing with vagueness, we are only left with the conclusion that there is no sensible way to use video review when it’s being used to adjudicate rules with vagueness.

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