Technology in baseball and football

I don't watch much sports.  I do swimming, running, skiing, sailing, scuba and many other sports.  I just don't watch.

I have seen Super Bowls and World Series so I know what happens.

I want to point out the difference between the way baseball and football have responded to technology.  The technology in point is TV and the ability to re-run a play in microscopic detail from several angles.

This is a matter of social thought: how institutions are structured around ideas, metaphors and images. 

In the recent World Series I saw game changing calls by the umpires that TV re-runs showed were wrong. Game changing.  I'm not even including the ability of TV to show the pitching rectangle and show where the pitch went inside or outside the strike zone.  Many, many pitches were called wrong. Doesn't matter. In baseball the TV perception of the game doesn't matter, only what the umpires see matters.  The game slowly goes on regardless of the accuracy of the umpire rulings.

Football is exactly the opposite.  If the TV re-run shows a different outcome than the referee's ruling, there is frequently a referee group consultation to look at the TV re-run before making a final ruling. The rules and rulings matter in football. 

Why the difference?

Because baseball is a game developed and popularized when much of America was agricultural and exploded when America became industrial with production line workers.  In agriculture rules don't matter, only the unforgivable, unpredictable weather... much like umpires.  In the industrial production line, again, rules don't really matter.  What the boss says is what counts.  Like it or lump it.  Just like the umpires.

Football became the national pastime with the rise of the AFL to play against the NFL in the early 1960s.  This beginning was in the white collar era in America.  White collar workers follow very exact rules, manuals and work in a meticulous environment.  Football is a very rule based game, most of the action is stopped by referee rulings.  As a consequence, getting the rulings right with TV back-up is important.

In football, the TV technology matters, in baseball it doesn't.

As an aside, I learned how ice hockey uses TV technology.  All professional games are viewed live in Toronto by the National Hockey League and when there is a dispute about how the puck got into the scoring net it is immediately ruled upon in Toronto and the game proceeds.  This is pure French culture.  In France, all communication for centuries has gone into and out of Paris, the central hub of the national spokes. For ice hockey it is Toronto.