Sports fans for decades lamented the fact that officials out on the field or the court couldn’t always see what fans could easily detect from the comfort of their living room couches. Even before enormous high-definition televisions entered the picture, fans were catching all those obviously blown calls in big games.

As networks added more cameras to catch the action from every conceivable angle — including one hovering just over the players in primetime NFL games — fans knew even more. Referees, umpires, and linesmen all were limited by their perspective in the middle of the action, and to err is human, after all.

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But hardcore fans aren’t terribly interested in humanity when their team loses a critical contest due to human error.

Ask St. Louis Cardinals fans, who still remember the blown call at first base that led to a Kansas City Royals win in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series. (The Royals won that series in seven games.) Ask Buffalo Sabres fans, who remain livid that Brett Hull of the Dallas Stars was awarded the series-winning goal of the 1999 Stanley Cup — despite Hull’s skate clearly being in the crease.

Which is why we now have some form of official replay review in what’s traditionally considered the four major American sports leagues: the MLB (baseball), the NFL (football), the NBA (basketball), and the NHL (hockey). You’ll also see it in professional tennis, NASCAR, and other sports.

So fans can kick back and enjoy their favorite sports in absolute contentment, knowing every call will be perfect, right? Of course not.

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Watch a handful of replay reviews in the NFL, and you’ll witness at least one of these: The officials call a completed pass, runner down by contact. It’s challenged. One broadcaster calls it an incomplete pass. His partner calls it complete, but followed by a fumble out of bounds. The network’s “replay specialist” calls it complete — but followed by a clearly recovered fumble.

Then the replay official comes back and calls it … something else entirely, such as an illegal triple forward pass. You halfway expect him to call it a field goal. Confusing, right?

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Despite all the technological advances, there are still issues with replay review in most sports. In football and baseball, the biggest complaints have been about how the review delays the game. The NFL already automatically reviews scoring plays and turnovers, along with allowing coaches’ challenges for other plays. Baseball breaks it out less often, but that sport already has pace-of-play issues, so adding replay doesn’t help.

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The NFL will be trying something new this fall: All final calls on review will be made in the league’s home office, instead of an on-field official going “under the hood” to view video of the play. The MLB is also considering adding microphones to umpires so that they can explain calls made from replay review — something they don’t do now.

The reality is that instant-replay review will always be a mixed bag.

The reality is that instant-replay review will always be a mixed bag. You can’t get the call right without stopping the action for a while. And sometimes, you still won’t get the call right. But it’s still probably better than making an obvious mistake.

You’d have a hard time finding many people with a better understanding of the issues regarding replay in professional baseball than Brandon Leopoldus. Not only is he a sports attorney in Los Angeles, but before starting his law career, Leopoldus worked as an umpire in Minor League Baseball.

“I get to hear all sides of the [replay] issue from friends who are officials, clients and fans — not to mention, I wish I had it available to me a time or two during my career,” Leopoldus told LifeZette.

“I am a firm believer that instant replay is a good thing for sports,” he said. “However, it does slow down the game. In a game like baseball, it already has issues with the pace of play, and speeding up the replay process can alleviate replay becoming just another delay in the game.”

“Instant replay is a good thing for sports.”

While it’s obviously important to get calls right, Leopoldus suggested that new uses of replay need to be thoughtfully instituted to keep things moving.

“One thing I would like to see is having replay situations sped up, and officials not having to walk over to a replay booth or headsets,” he said. “With modern technology, leagues should be able to use tablets — like the NFL will be doing this upcoming season — or other means to communicate with on-field officials to speed up the process.”

Soccer, the world’s most popular sport, has been reluctant, mostly, to embrace replay. FIFA refused to consider it for years and is only now testing the waters. The MLS just started trying it here in America.

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However, it’s become a standard aspect of English Premier League football (that’s “soccer” to us Americans), which is becoming steadily more popular on our shores. Peter Briers, who runs the92.net (a website about English football stadiums), spoke with LifeZette about the technology.

“Goal-line technology has been used in the English Premier League since the 2013-14 season and has been a resounding success in my eyes,” said Briers, who lives in Southampton, Hampshire. “It has cleared up any doubt when it comes to the ball crossing the line, and many a controversial issue has been avoided.”

Briers said “the decision is so quick” for goal-line technology — determining whether the ball fully crossed the line for a goal — that he can’t see any downside to it.

Beyond that, he said, “I can see technology being introduced into other elements of the game, but I think it should be used in real time and only for decisions where there is a right or wrong answer.” Any subjective calls that are “down to interpretation … need to be left alone.”