Mike Celizic

I’ve been slow coming over to instant replay as a way of double-checking officials’ calls. I’m still not sure I want to see it in baseball; the game is slow enough as it is without rerunning the tape a dozen times to see what is often unseeable. But I’m sold on it in football, and the NCAA’s decision to use it in every Division I-A game is one of the best decisions that hoary body has ever made.

Given the way the NCAA decides the championship in its flagship sport, instant replay isn’t just a nice add-on to the game; it’s as necessary as air in the footballs. That’s because the governing body of intercollegiate athletics doesn’t decide a champion at all, but cedes its power to the Bowl Championship Series, which crowns a purported champ every year.

The world’s most flawless logician could write a book about the formulas used to rank all the Division I-A teams, and it still wouldn’t make any sense. Anyway, despite all the factors and voters and computers, it comes down to hoping that there are two — and only two — undefeated teams left at the end of the season that can play for a big crystal football.

In a reasonable world, which is to say one with which the NCAA’s football folks are yet to be acquainted, there would be a playoff for a real championship. But, since there isn’t, it becomes vital that the programs hoping to play for the trophy have the best possible officiating. One call won’t knock a top NFL team out of the playoffs, but it can knock a top college team out of the BCS championship game.

Given that millions of dollars and eternal bragging rights are at stake, if the NCAA isn’t going to do what’s fair and have a playoff, the least it can do is to try to save teams from losing their chances to a bad call.

I won’t run through a litany of awful calls made over the years, but every college football fan still burns with the memory of the particularly egregious calls that separated his or her team from its moment of glory. Notre Dame fans certainly wish instant replay had been in use last year to spot where Matt Leinart went out of bounds on the game-winning drive. (As was his right at the time as the visiting coach, USC's Pete Carroll opted against using replay before the game).

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The point is, bad calls are a part of every game. The officials are better than they’ve ever been, but they’re human. They’re also often middle-aged men chasing around after players who are bigger and faster than ever. Even the best will miss calls.

And NCAA officials, no matter how good they are, aren’t as good as NFL officials. There are also far more of them, meaning that there are a substantial number of marginal officials on the playing fields of America every Saturday afternoon in the late summer and fall.