Commissioner Mark Cohon will announce today at an 11:00am news conference, that for the 2008 season, TSN will host an on-line poll on all Video reviews.
“I think this will give our fans a chance to be part of the process.? Cohon says in a written release to be read today, “The Referee has 90 seconds to make a ruling, and TSN Technical Director Leroy Schmitt has confirmed TSN can compile poll results in 120 seconds and get that information to the broadcast crew.? Besides being a fun way to partcipate, Cohon says if the fans have a high percentage of correct votes, they may start hiring officials from the generaal audiences.
Actually the April Fools joke was fairely obvious. Cohen making two appearences for statements in two weeks is pretty unbeleivable. Yup, pretty lame on my part, I should have quoted some one else at CFL Head Office.
The sad thing is, while I knew this was an April Fool's gag, I think it is actually a good idea...if it is technologically feasible...which it likely is.
Assuming of course they aren't going to scrap replay altogether, which would be my preference.
Instead of Instant Replay, the fans attending the game will be told to raise their hands if they agree with a call or not. It may take a while to count them, or maybe with modern technology we could wire all the seats with yes or no buttons to vote on each challenge flag from the coaches.
I think you go with the electronic voting. Maybe text messaging will work. And of course the fans will vote with their heads, not their hearts because sports fans are notoriously unbiased…
And if we open it up to text messaging, the Riders won’t ever need to worry about bogus calls going against us, as Rider fans never ever stuff the ballot box on these things…
No matter how you do it, the important thing is, the quality of the refereeing will not be affected by fan response…
