The Instant Replay Game
Quirk has worked memorable games throughout his career. In his second year in the NFL, he was involved in an instant replay decision during a 1989 NFL season game between the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers. It would become known in NFL lore as "The Instant Replay Game". On fourth down, Green Bay quarterback Don Majkowski threw an apparent fourteen-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Sterling Sharpe with thirty-two seconds remaining in the fourth quarter to tie the score of the game at 13-13. As a line judge, Quirk ruled that Majkowski's body had crossed the line of scrimmage, which under rules was an illegal forward pass, nullifying the touchdown and turning over the ball to Chicago. The play was reviewed by the replay official, Bill Parkinson. Parkinson relied on the view supplied by a fixed camera on the roof of the stadium to review the play. After a four minutes and 54 seconds, he ruled the ball was still behind the line, overruling Quirk's call, and giving the Packers the score. Green Bay kicked the extra point and won the game, 14-13.
The impact of this play resulted in the change of the illegal forward pass rule for the 1990 NFL season to include a passer's body being across the line, not only the ball, in determining an infraction and a limit of two minutes for instant replay reviews. The following year, the Bears, still upset over the replay reversal, noted the game with an asterisk in the team's media guide as a "Replay ruling". It has been said this call was one of the factors that led to the resignation of Art McNally, who at the time was the league's supervisor of officials.
Read more about this topic: Jim Quirk, Officiating Career, NFL Career
Famous quotes containing the words instant, replay and/or game:
“The end will come quickly, my love. There is a pain beyond pain, an agony so intense it shocks the mind into instant oblivion. We’ll find immortality together, for they’ll remember me through you.”
—Crane Wilbur (1889–1973)
“One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said—the words one didn’t have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one’s dignity or survival.”
—Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)
“Even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably.”
—Truman Capote (1924–1984)