BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (Feb. 21, 2019) – The Southeastern Conference will use a Centralized Video Review process for Conference baseball games beginning with the 2019 SEC season, becoming the first conference to use a centralized process as permitted by NCAA rules.
A Replay Official in the SEC Video Center, located in the Conference Office, will review plays in SEC vs. SEC games and will render decisions that will be communicated to the on-site umpire crew. The process is consistent with the system used by Major League Baseball.
A similar system was implemented for the 2018 SEC Baseball Tournament, in which video review was conducted from a replay booth in the press box. A replay official made decisions from the replay booth and communicated those decisions to the crew chief on the field.
This marks the third sport in which the SEC has implemented a collaborative or centralized replay system. The SEC successfully implemented a collaborative replay process in the sport of football in 2016, and the Conference secured NCAA approval to implement a collaborative instant replay process in men’s basketball the following year.
In 2018, the SEC was granted permission by the NCAA, on an experimental basis and for conference games only, to expand the number of plays that were permitted to be reviewed in baseball and also to use a system that gave each head coach up to two challenges per game to review plays. In 2019, the NCAA approved a national standard set of regulations for all college baseball games that use video review, permanently expanding the number of plays and making the head coach challenge system available for all games.
The SEC’s Centralized Video Review System will be tested at selected non-conference games prior to the start of SEC play, which is scheduled to begin March 15.
