Mistakes are part of the game

The argument

Competitive sport is all about the human athletic spirit and the limits that the body can withstand, and unnecessary advancements in technology like VAR completely do away with that possibility of human error. We watch sports because humans are not perfect, and it makes it even more special to see humans achieve various feats of athletic skill and versatility. The argument places officiating inside the game rather than outside it. If fallibility is what makes athletic achievement meaningful, then a referee's fallibility belongs to the same human contest, and removing it treats as a defect something that is part of what is being watched. There are many determining factors that contribute to a referee's call, and some believe that the game should remain the same. A decision taken in real time by one person from a single viewpoint with no opportunity to review is a different kind of act from a decision taken from several angles in slow motion, so replacing the first with the second changes what the official is doing rather than simply making them better at it. WIRED reports, "By relying on video technology rather than the human biases of a ref, the game is slower and less emotional. It also gives an edge to the more powerful, wealthy teams over weaker, poorer teams." Two distinct costs are identified there. The first concerns the experience itself, since a celebration deferred pending review is not the same event as a celebration; the second concerns competitive balance, and matters because it means the change is not neutral between the clubs subject to it. Sports management expert Kjetil Haugen claims that people are drawn to sports because of the uncertainty of outcomes in games, and removing human error also removes that uncertainty. This is the argument's conclusion about what has actually been lost: uncertainty is the reason a result is worth waiting for, and a system built to make outcomes more determinate erodes the very quality that draws an audience to watch at all.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Human error is one of the essential aspects of the game that should be removed entirely. Yes, humanity is a fundamental part of the players, but referees should be unbiased and accurate all the time. VAR has even been proven to increase the accuracy of match-changing calls significantly, so why should a team win a game unfairly if they didn't even deserve it? The pure emotion of the game is neither removed nor lessened with VAR, and the undesirable emotions on the part of the refs are almost entirely taken out of the equation. Football should be based off of humanity, but not in match-altering decisions by the referees.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Human error and bias by the referees should always be discouraged, because a team should not be unfairly rewarded where they clearly did not deserve it. [Rejecting P3] VAR should be used in football to increase referee's accuracy while maintaining the human emotion of the game.