The XFL will use Hawk-Eye cameras for its replay review system during the 2020 season, which kicks off Feb. 8. The league will only allow replay officials to initiate replay reviews, leaving no room for coaches challenges that exist in the NFL.
Plays will be subject to review by the XFL’s replay official, who will be stationed in a booth above the field. The XFL’s list of plays it deems to be reviewable is nearly identical to the NFL’s current classification of plays—the two differences being that 1) the XFL won’t review pass interference calls and 2) the XFL will allow officials to review any “obvious errors” involving player safety during games.
In an XFL press conference held Tuesday, the league explained that attaining a faster pace of play was a major factor in developing its new rules. Other XFL rules include a 25-second play clock (15 seconds shorter than the NFL’s) and a game clock that will run after incompletions and out-of-bounds plays, except in the last two minutes of each half.
“[Hawk-Eye] allows us to have independence from the broadcast networks. We don’t have to rely solely on them for the timing of the angles,” Dean Blandino, the XFL’s head of officiating, said Tuesday. “We can bring in multiple camera feeds immediately. At the end of a play we can look to six, eight, 10 different angles and pick the right angle to make a decision and not have to wait for the network to show it. We feel like it will make our process very efficient.”
Hawk-Eye is best known for being used to officiate in/out calls in tennis and for powering video assistant referee systems in soccer. The NFL does not use Hawk-Eye for its replay system, but MLB is considering Hawk-Eye to replace TrackMan for tracking pitches in its Statcast system.
