Replay as an officiating aid is a good thing. It can foster awareness and confidence in our ability to get plays right almost all of the time. We are glad to have replay as our ally. That said, however, I feel a need to point out some troubling themes and undercurrents. Both should be addressed at a policy and procedure level before the tool becomes a brickbat.

This summer in Memphis, the National Association of Sports Officials hosts its 23rd annual Sports Officiating Summit. The theme of this year’s event is: “Officiating and Technology, What Works.” The environment of instant replay will be energetically discussed. As a prelude to that discussion, permit me some observations.

A line has been crossed. The calls we make during a game, normally labeled as “judgment calls,” are now fair game for review and reversal. It could be that our judgment calls were always subject to review of the “higher” authorities, but clearly the understanding was something different. For all the years I worked basketball, I understood and accepted that if I screwed up a rules-based call then bad things could happen to me. As for judgment calls, they were just that — your very best judgment applied at the time. When asked about such calls, plenty of supervisors said, “That was a judgment call and I am not discussing a judgment call.” The general policy was that judgment calls were not subject to public laundering.

Well, welcome to the new architecture of officiating. We should have seen it coming. Every play being recorded. Every call being evaluated. Certainly, judgment calls would not remain exempt. They no longer are. From here forward, all the calls we make will be evaluated and sanctions imposed when we are adjudged to be in error.

It might be that the first major step down this new path took place through Major League Baseball’s employment of the QuesTec system for charting balls and strikes. Yes, other initiatives to quantify officiating performance came well before QuesTec, but it just seems to me that the charting of ball and strike calls, a sincerely judgmental undertaking, marked a paradigm shift. From the charting came the evaluation, came the educational efforts, came the rewards and the punishments. That technological approach to helping officials improve their judgment found adherents in other sports and other levels of sport.

For the most part, technology was used initially as a tool to help officials evaluate clearly definable case plays: feet in or out, ball breaking the plane, time remaining on the clock, etc. But guess what? The more the plays were reviewed the more other calls — judgment calls — began to be looked at. A small step from there was to pass judgment on the judgments.

This past basketball season was the first one I recall during which such things as technical fouls were reviewed by the authorities after the fact and the calls announced as wrong. In one case the crew that called the technical was found to have committed such an “egregious” act that it was required to sit for a game afterward. In another case, the league went public with its view that the imposition of a technical was unwarranted. Not wrong, mind you, but unwarranted.

We are witnessing what we did in 1972 during the Munich Olympics men’s basketball final. Then-FIBA General Secretary R. William Jones came down onto the floor from his seat in the stands and instructed the referees to put time on the clock and replay the play. Wild stuff indeed.

I am an unrelenting proponent of every play being officiated correctly, every time. Of course, in reality, that isn’t a reasonable goal. It is simply a dreamlike state. Plays are going to be messed up from time to time. The fact doesn’t preclude us from doing everything we can to get them right. We don’t need anyone telling us that the goal is to get them right. What we do need is some definition of what is fair game for public utterance about supposed mistakes and the imposition of punitive action.

In some measure I think we have entered into an “age of appeasement.” If an official makes an error, regardless of causality, then a price is to be paid — an appeasement to the media, the public, the school or the coach is in order. I hope those who have embarked on that course understand what is actually at stake here.

Replay is a fact of officiating and of the games we play. That it is reflects the evolutionary course of broadcast media, one by the way that goes well beyond sporting events. There is no turning back, nor should there be. Leadership is needed to ensure that the men and women charged with rendering impartial and accurate judgments in a fast-paced, highly charged environment can do so in a manner that enhances the stature of sports officiating and that they are supported when they carry out their assignments in a reasonable way.

The integrity of the game is vitally important. The need to thoughtfully respond to inquiry and criticism in this public world of sport is necessary. Engendering confidence in sports officials and the officiating process needs to have equal weight. Over time, the tone and tenor of our sports experience will turn on this reality.

Barry Mano is the founder and president of the National Association of Sports Officials.