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Report: SEC’s new collaborative replay on record pace for review stoppages this season
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Alabama’s 48-43 win at Ole Miss last weekend was riddled with replays, a microcosm of a trend that’s sweeping the SEC early in 2016.
The Montgomery Advertiser reports the SEC is on pace for 299 replay reviews resulting in 130 overturned calls during the regular season, which would far surpass 2015’s record-setting season for both (203 reviews with 76 overturned). Officials have utilized the new collaborative SEC replay in 27 games already this year, according to the report.
Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban doesn’t seem to have a problem with the frequent replay system, which overturned four of six review in his team’s win against the Rebels.
“Yeah it slows the game down, yeah there’s a lot of reviews, but I think the No. 1 priority is everybody wants to get it right,” Saban said Monday. “The games are a lot better that we have replays that we get it right. … I appreciate the fact that we’ve gone to the new system where we sort of have a command central (in Birmingham) where we have the best people reviewing these things and making the best decisions.”
The report claimed a season-high 28 replay reviews with 15 overturned calls occurred in the nine games that featured SEC replay last weekend. Though the replay stoppages are more prevalent, the report found the average replay time last week was just 3 minutes, 17 seconds — shorter than the average time during the first two weeks of 2016 and any whole season since the SEC first adopted replay in 2005.
Marcus covers SEC football for Saturday Down South.
