NFL Owners Vote Down Use of Instant Replay

National Football League owners narrowly defeated a proposal Wednesday that would have authorized the use of instant replays to oversee officials’ decisions during this season’s playoffs.

Sixteen of 25 teams present at the league’s fall meetings in New York voted for the use of the replays, but that was three short of the three-quarters majority needed for approval.

Instant replay was tested in nationally televised exhibition games this season and generally was considered a success by league officials. Last month, Tex Schramm, president of the Dallas Cowboys and chairman of the league’s rule-making Competition Committee, began pushing to institute replays in the playoffs.

During the experiment, an official sitting in the press box reviewed the tapes of controversial plays and notified the officials on the field that he was checking the tapes. Twenty-eight plays were examined but only one call was reversed.