Pro football has it.
So does the NBA, National Hockey League, college football, college basketball and Major League Baseball.
In this day of accuracy, instant replay has become a permanent fixture in college and professional sports.
In high schools, however, instant replay is a distant dream of anything that is remotely possible.
The cost would be too much for a publicly funded school district.
Each of the 32 NFL football clubs spent $300,000 in 2007 for the instant replay system used in the NFL today.
What school district has that much money? The better question is, what taxpayer wants to see their taxes raised to pay for it?
Texas athletic directors might want to look into the possibility of doing something to ensure accuracy from its officials.
According to Mark Hudson, policy director for the University Interscholastic League, there isn’t even a procedure in place for teams that want to protest calls that potentially change the outcome of a game.
One bad call — most of the time — cannot and will not change the outcome of a game, but it did Tuesday night.
The offsides call on Kattie Patterson in Bastrop’s bi-district playoff game with San Antonio Reagan changed the entire complexion of the game.
Patterson was called offsides by the line judge from the Brazos Valley chapter of soccer officials.
The call was controversial because Patterson’s goal should have tied the game with 10 minutes left to play.
In the photo of Patterson’s shot on this particular goal, which accompanies this article, she is clearly onsides.
Patterson has one defender in front of her and another one that is parallel to her when she is taking the shot, thus not offsides.
However, due to no policy or procedure for protesting games or calls like this one in particular, Bastrop had nothing it could do to correct this wrong.
“Once the game is over, it’s over,” Hudson said.
Hudson added that the head coach could protest the call at the time it was called.
Most officials, however, will not reverse calls once they are made and if Bastrop head coach Angelia Watson would have argued the call, she took the risk of getting a caution (yellow card) or being ejected with a red card, depending on the level she took her protest.
Unfortunately, this is one call that ultimately changed everything for the Lady Bears.
For the first 30 minutes of the second half, Bastrop had eight shots to Reagan’s two.
Bastrop was dominating this half and had about as much momentum as a steam engine on its way down a 30-foot mountain without breaks.
If Patterson’s goal would have stood, the game would have been tied for the last 10 minutes and Bastrop, more than likely, would have found the back of the goal again with its momentum.
The case could be made that Reagan’s Sarah Van Horn scored after Patterson’s goal, but who knows if that would have happened if Patterson’s goal would have counted.
That call shifted momentum from Bastrop and put it with the Lady Rattlers.
This was a playoff game in which one team was on the verge of tying the No. 1 team in the state.
The game had upset written all over it when Patterson scored this goal, but for the six seniors on this team, there will always be that doubt.
The UIL needs to address this issue for no other reason than to protect the integrity of the game.
Allow a coach the chance to protest a game within 24 hours if they have enough evidence to prove that a call made changed the complexion of the game, much like Tuesday night’s call did.
While instant replay might be an unrealistic method to getting it right, there has to be other avenues available to assure an official cannot change the complexion of a game with one wrong call.