Isaiah Likely of the Baltimore Ravens with his toe out of bounds.
Credit...Ed Zurga/Associated Press

The Robotic Future of Pro Sports

We explore a looming change in sports officiating.

06 Oct 2024, 11:18 by https://www.nytimes.com/by/ken-belson · NY Times

I cover sports and business.

For most of sports history, there was no recourse when a referee made a bad call. Fans could boo and players could complain, but the game went on. Instant replay changed that a few decades ago, allowing coaches to challenge a call and ask the referees to review it. That made games fairer, but it also made them slower.

Now, many professional sports are on the verge of a new technological breakthrough: automated referee systems, which get the call right every time and significantly reduce delays from reviews.

Leagues insist that these systems, which they are testing in the minors or in preseason games, are not meant to eliminate officials. Umpires and referees are still necessary to make nuanced calls — checked swings in baseball, charging in basketball, pass interference in football. But the leagues believe automated systems could make games both fairer and faster.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain what this technology can do as well as the concerns that some league officials have about it.

State of the tools

Technology is built into the rules of professional sports. The N.F.L. requires instant-replay reviews of all scoring plays and turnovers to ensure that the calls are right.

That was on display on the final play of the season-opening game in Kansas City. The Baltimore Ravens tight end Isaiah Likely caught a potential game-tying pass in the back of the end zone. But after a 90-second video review, officials determined that Likely’s toe was out of bounds, negating the pass and handing Kansas City the win.

It was an example of what technology does best in sports: help referees make a decision about an easily defined play. But it also highlighted one pitfall of the current system: For fans, that 90-second wait can feel a lot longer.

Automating those decisions would allow games to move more quickly. And for one sport, that has already happened at the highest level. Sony’s Hawk-Eye Live system, which for years allowed tennis players to challenge calls and see exactly where a shot had landed, has gotten so good that it now handles all the line calls at the U.S. Open and the Australian Open.

On the horizon

America’s big professional sports leagues have not moved to automated refereeing yet, but most of them are testing their own systems.

Baseball appears to be nearing a major change. It has used a system that automatically determines whether a pitch is a ball or a strike in its minor leagues, across more than 8,000 games. The system could make its first appearance in the majors next year, when the league may test it during spring training.

The N.F.L. is also testing computerized officiating. This preseason, the league introduced cameras that help spot the ball after plays. The technology could mean the end of the chain gangs who run onto the field with two poles connected by a 10-yard chain to measure first downs.

And the N.B.A. is testing technology to automatically detect goaltending calls, which involves determining whether the ball was moving upward or downward when it was blocked.

The human element

When baseball began testing its automatic umpire system in the minor leagues, it introduced two variations. One determines balls and strikes on every pitch and notifies the umpire, who signals the result. The second variation, which uses the same technology, is called upon only when a pitcher, catcher or batter challenges an umpire’s call.

Umpires have been right on about half of those challenged calls. But players still said they preferred the challenge system to the automated one. Some said that challenges add a strategic element.

“Originally, we thought everybody was going to be wholeheartedly in favor” of the fully automatic calls, said Rob Manfred, the M.L.B. commissioner. But, he said, “players feel there could be other effects on the game that would be negative if you used it full-blown.”

Rich McKay, the chief executive of the Atlanta Falcons, leads the N.F.L.’s committee on game rules and had similar feelings about the potential for automated calls in football. “When you take the officiating out of the game and try to put it in a different place, I’m just nervous about what that leads to,” he said. “You’d have to rewrite all the rules.”

THE LATEST NEWS

Republican Campaign

Donald Trump returned to the stage in Butler, Pa., where a gunman tried to kill him in July. His latest rally there sought to recapture the momentum he had before President Biden left the race.
Trump invited Elon Musk to speak. Musk, who wore a black MAGA hat and twice lifted his arms above his head and jumped, told the crowd: “As you can see, I’m not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA.”
It is unclear whether Trump, if elected, would reduce U.S. support for Ukraine, but he has a longstanding animus toward the country. A 2017 meeting with Vladimir Putin helps explain that.

Democratic Campaign

Kamala Harris will sit for several interviews this week, mostly friendly ones, after largely avoiding the press since her campaign began. She is set to appear on “The View” and Stephen Colbert’s late night show.
Harris met with Arab and Muslim leaders in Michigan, where the U.S. position on the war in Gaza could threaten her support.
For months, Democrats have trained volunteers across battleground states to personally testify, both on television and locally, about the effects of Republican-led abortion restrictions.

Israel and Hezbollah

The Israeli military carried out an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon overnight and said it had killed two Hamas commanders there.
“How is anyone benefiting from what’s going on?”: Many Lebanese are angry that Hezbollah is dragging their politically and economically frail country into a war.
The way Israel began its latest ground campaign against Hezbollah suggests it has learned lessons from its 2006 invasion of Lebanon. Ending the fight will be harder.

More International News

Moose, introduced to Newfoundland 120 years ago, are involved in hundreds of car crashes every year. But the animal is an accepted part of life there.
Tunisia’s autocratic president, Kais Saied, will almost certainly win re-election today. His leading challenger is in prison.

Other Big Stories

The genetic testing company 23andMe is struggling. The turmoil has raised concerns about what might happen to the data it’s collected from millions of customers.
More than a week after Hurricane Helene made landfall, officials in the southeastern United States are scrambling to fix electrical lines and roads.

THE SUNDAY DEBATE

Should Pete Rose be in the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Yes. Major League Baseball was right to punish Rose for his gambling and subsequent lying while he was alive, but the ban should end at his death. “Rose isn’t being punished, his fans are,” Christopher Scalia writes for The Wall Street Journal.

No. Now that sports betting is legal, it’s even more important for the league to enforce its rules strictly. “Backing down would undermine the league’s commitment to zero tolerance,” Bloomberg’s Adam Minter writes.

FROM OPINION

As a young, idealistic medical student, Jonathan Reisman thought his job would always be safe from artificial intelligence. Then ChatGPT came along.

Here are columns by Ross Douthat on the Biden presidency and Maureen Dowd on JD Vance.

MORNING READS

Wartime comfort: In Kyiv, Yorkies, poodles and bichons frisés rule the streets.

Routine: How a gardener at a Brooklyn park spends her Sundays.

Health: After bouts of vision loss for 18 years, a young woman finally received a diagnosis that made sense.

Vows: Thirteen days after meeting, she proposed on TV and he followed suit.

Lives Lived: Marvin Schlachter was a record executive who helped launch Dionne Warwick and the Shirelles in the 1960s and, a decade later, created an influential disco label. Schlachter died at 90.

BOOK OF THE WEEK

By Elisabeth Egan

“The Sequel,” by Jean Hanff Korelitz: When it comes to writers — their quirks, insecurities and woe-is-me-isms — nobody is more self aware and witty than Jean Hanff Korelitz. Her last best seller, “The Plot,” plumbed the depths of a middling novelist’s career, showing how far he’d go for a hit. Her new novel, “The Sequel,” picks up where that one left off, but from the perspective of the novelist’s widow, Anna Williams-Bonner, who’s written a book of her own. As she’s traveling the country, hopscotching from festival to bookstore to hotel room, she realizes that her new career isn’t the blank slate she’d hoped for … because somebody knows her secret back story. Will Anna’s debut double as a finale? As sequels go, Korelitz’s is remarkably independent. You don’t need to cram “The Plot” to get your bearings, but you might want to just for fun. Read our review of “The Sequel” here.

More on books

As a literary agent, Betsy Lerner is well acquainted with the foibles of novelists. Now, at 64, she’s joining the fray.
Looking for a low-key book group with intelligent conversation and no guilt? Join the Book Review Book Club. This month’s pick is “Intermezzo” by Sally Rooney.

THE INTERVIEW

By David Marchese

This week’s subject for The Interview is the legendary actor Al Pacino. His memoir, “Sonny Boy,” will be published Oct. 15.

I saw an interview with you a couple of years ago in which you mentioned that you’d been asked to write a book. You said you didn’t want to because the prospect seemed torturous. What changed?

Nothing. I regret it. Who needs to be out and about in this world, putting yourself up as another target? I mean, waking up in the middle of the night, having tremors — you break out in a cold sweat thinking, I shouldn’t have done this. But I was telling the truth. That’s all I know.

You must get directors who have said to you, thinking about other performances you’ve done, something to the effect of, “Give me more Al Pacino.” What do you think they’re looking for?

Go louder. [Laughs.] I couldn’t tell you. Nobody’s ever said that. They did say things to me in the theater, and I had to adjust. One director came up to me once, when I was young, and he says, “The character did this, and then he’s feeling this way here, and he does this.” So I said to him, “You seem to really relate to this person.” He said, “What?” I said, “Maybe you should play him.” Dead silence. I don’t like that kind of talk. A director who’s directing you and is helping you with your part is telling you how to do it? I don’t understand that. Then why did you cast me in the first place?

What’s a great note you got from a director?

One of the best notes I ever got was from Lee Strasberg when we were doing “… And Justice for All.” I was doing a scene, and Lee leaned over. He says, “Darling, you’ve got to learn your lines.”

Read more of the interview here.

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE

Click the cover image above to read this week’s magazine.

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Make better scones by adding potatoes.

Keep your grill safe during winter.

Charge your phone wirelessly.

MEAL PLAN

In this week’s Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein recommends placing this one-pot chicken and rice with caramelized lemon at the top of your fall cooking list. She also suggests making crispy gnocchi with spinach and feta, coconut fish curry and honey-habanero pork chops with carrots.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was officially.

Can you put eight historical events — including the California gold rush, the life of Confucius, and the creation of the Band-Aid — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz.

And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands.

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times.

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com.