The Premier League Released Mic'd Up VAR Conversations Between Referees And Every Sport Needs To Show These Live
Now this is good stuff. On Monday, the Premier League ran a special with a former referee going through several VAR decisions from this season and showing the conversations between the on-field and video assistant referees.
Obviously, the calls they're going to show in a TV special are going to be ones the officials got right. That's fine. But we need these conversations to happen live in front of an audience in every sport.
Firstly, it's just interesting. I love watching stuff like this and to be able to get real-time feedback from what the refs are looking at during a review would be fascinating. But far more importantly, if you're going to piss on me and tell me it's raining, you're going to have to explain to me why that's happening.
Other than the NBA's bullshit reports it comes out with after games that just often say, "Yeah, your team got fucked, sorry," there is almost zero accountability for officials in any sport. They don't have to answer questions from the media and they don't have to explain how they came to any decision. If you're going to get a call wrong and then watch it on video and get it wrong again, fans are at least owed a look into the conversation that took place while they were looking at it.
I can live with mistakes made in real-time, but if you're going to get it wrong twice, I need to see how exactly that happened. And the officials should want this too because it makes them look human and even if you don't agree with it, you can see why they came to a particular decision.
Hopefully having refs mic'd continues to catch on and eventually makes it into live broadcasts because this could really help just about every sport.