There will be no instant replay in high school football games.
That’s the word from Greg Stahl, executive director for the Missouri State High School Activities Association.
In January, the rules committee for the National Federation of State High School Associations told states they could adopt instant replay during postseason games.
Stahl said Alabama, Minnesota and Connecticut have been experimenting with replay for three years. Teams in Minnesota get to use U.S. Bank Stadium – the home of the NFL’s Vikings – for free for the state semifinals and championship. MSHSAA paid the University of Missouri $90,000 this year to use Memorial Stadium for three days for its seven state championship games, according to Stahl.
At its April board meeting, MSHSAA members discussed and quickly shelved the idea of using instant replay.
“Here’s the problem,” he said. “From financial commitments, things aren’t the same from state to state.”
Stahl had a laundry list of potential problems if replay would be adopted.
“Where do you start and stop?” he said. “Which plays will you replay? Which time frames during the game would plays be reviewable – scoring plays, non-scoring plays? All of those factors would have to be decided or you would have mass chaos during postseason games.”
Hiring a company to run the instant replay system would be costly, Stahl said.
“We already have a level of expense. It’s not chump change,” he said. “These reasons are precisely why we didn’t feel replay was an avenue we wanted to go to right now.”
Even if MSHSAA had access to the cameras at Memorial Stadium that are used by the SEC Network, there’s always a chance the venue could be moved elsewhere.
Stahl said some states are locked into their venues for the state playoffs for decades. That’s not the case in Missouri.
“Another concern was if we were to crack the door at the state final sites, it’s without question folks will knock on the door to use it in all other postseason games, right down to districts,” Stahl said. “Where will those requests stop? Well they’re not going to stop. There are so many details to be accounted for.”
Stahl said his office hasn’t fielded enough comments or questions about the quality of officiating in football to raise any kind of concern.
Training officials to use replay and hiring additional staff in the press boxes that are reviewing the play would also be necessary.
“We don’t want to use it unless you can declare a level of consistency in its use,” Stahl said.
In my three years of covering football in Jefferson County, I couldn’t recall an instance where a play was so egregiously missed by the referees that a coach said aloud, “I wish we had instant replay.”
The fact is that high school football isn’t fast enough that plays can’t be called in real time. That’s not always the case in Division I or the NFL, though.
“It works at the pro level because the game is so fast,” Jefferson head coach Alex Rouggly said. “By the naked eye as an official, you can’t make everything correct. The high school game’s a lot slower. You slow down the game even more with replay.
“You can really slow down a game and momentum. That’s a big-time expenditure I don’t think MSHSAA or high schools have,” he said.
Herculaneum head coach Cody Hunter wondered how schools would be able to afford or outfit their game days with the equipment and personnel necessary to run instant replay.
“Do you only do it in the playoffs when there was a team that needed it during districts because of a call that was missed?” Hunter said. “The bottom line for me is to get the call right.
“If it’s fair for everybody and it travels to any size of school and everybody has equal opportunity to it, I’m all for it. Some calls are missed, even at the highest level. I wish we could challenge calls at times. It’s never going to be a perfect system. I’m not sure if replay is the answer.”
Another significant rules change voted on by the national body is extending the 25-second play clock to 40 seconds, in many cases. The change was made to make the time between downs more consistent. The play clock will still be set at 25 seconds following any kind of scoring play, to start a quarter (overtime as well), after an inadvertent whistle, a timeout by the team or officials or if the referee stops the play clock for any reason.
That rule change is mandatory for each state, and Stahl said Missouri is 100 percent in agreement with it.
However, some schools might have to spend money to update their play clocks.
“If you have a relatively old 25-second clock, most will require a conversion kit,” Stahl said. “If you have one that’s five to seven years old, it’s a matter of changing a chip in the board that talks between the control panel and press box.”
Changing the play clock could benefit play on both sides of the football, Hunter said.
“On defense you can recognize formations,” he said. “It’s going to change the amount of possessions you can have in a game. If you’re a run-and-gun team, it’s not going to hurt you. If you’re a grind-it-out wishbone team, it’s going to be in your favor because you want to control the clock.”