High-definition televisions are coming to instant replay this football season in three or four conferences, including the SEC.

David Parry, the national coor­dinator of football officials, said the Big Ten, Big 12 and possibly the ACC will be the others.

“I think it’s a good move,” Parry said. “Sometimes a guy at home with high definition was getting a better view of replay than the guy in the stadium at the booth.”

Parry estimated the cost to in­stall high-definition TVs at $40,000 to $50,000 per school. “It’s quite expensive,” he said.

Instant replay, as usual, was heavily discussed at a national meeting last month with confer­ence officiating supervisors. Sev­eral replay rulings across the country drew criticism last sea­son, including one near the con­clusion of the Alabama-LSU game.

The NCAA rulebook states a ruling may be reversed only if there is “indisputable video evi­dence,” a phrase that can be in­terpreted differently depending on the person in the booth.

“This is a gray area, no doubt,” Parry said. “Sometimes guys in the booth get very nit-picky and that usually gets us in trouble. (The review) takes a long time and you say, ‘How can it be in­disputable if it takes three min­utes?’ ”

When replay began in 2003 as a Big Ten experiment, about one out of every three reviews re­sulted in a reversal, and now has increased to two reversals out of every five reviews, Parry said. Play used to be stopped for a re­view in one of every three games; now it’s four shutdowns for ev­ery five games.
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