September 6, 2026

Any student of American Literature of the last fifty years knows their Marx -- Leo, not Karl. Leo Marx's seminal 1964 The Machine In The Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America captured a trend among well-known American writers to capture the tension of technology's encroachment on pastoral peace, whether it be the village clock sounding off in Hawthorne's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," the train whistle interrupting the sanctity of Thoreau's Walden, or the collision of the steamboat with the raft in Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Marx's book is a treasured treatise for thousands of us who study such things, especially as we contemplated needed ideals at the end of the 20th century.

In 2026, however, the machine has lumbered creakily out of our pastoral settings into something much more sacred, our sporting events. And in doing so, the machine has exploded the true American dream, that underdogs can still arise, bringing down the powerful enterprises that money has helped prop up. 

O.k., maybe I have fallen prey again to hyperbole. I don't think so, though. I carried a general indifference to these situations; nevertheless, the outcomes are personal to me. While I could cite examples from baseball, basketball, tennis, or golf, I will look at two instances from the last three months, both of which involved games where I had no rooting interest.

We can start with soccer (sorry, this will always be an American-based website) where the Video Assistant Review (VAR) system was under tons of scrutiny during the 2026 World Cup, mostly for negligible offsides call. Those are often judgement calls anyway, so I mostly just lamented the intrusion of the action by VAR. The much more egregious scenario was the overturning of a Croatian goal because a chip in the ball confirmed a microscopic touch by a player that was not visible to the naked eye. The play, with the subsequent lengthy delay for review, was late enough in the game that it turned a certain Croatian victory into a tie eventually broken by the mighty Portugal. Thousands of Croatian (and Croatian-American) fans were left heartbroken.

And then last night, the University of Michigan football team appeared to have lost to the Western Michigan University Broncos, a last-second hail mary heaved by Michigan knocked down just past the end zone with 0.00 seconds clearly showing on the scoreboard clock. While Broncos' stormed the field, and U of M fans booed, the play was reviewed, with everyone, including the broadcast booth's rule expert, convinced the game was over. Not so fast, my friends: The officials determined that there should be one second left. Time to get the teams back to set up for one more play. Sure enough, this time the hail mary was completed and Michigan had an improbable come from behind victory. After the game, the Big Ten officials stated that something called "the Hawkeye system" apparently had a different sync of the (not-last) play. (Note to visiting teams playing in the Big Ten, you might be leery of a review system named after a conference school's mascot.)

Too bad no one in the crowds in Toronto or in Ann Arbor saw these discrepancies that the technology supposedly nailed. Michigan's head coach, Kyle Wittingham, said he thought he saw the clock at 1 second when the ball was touched but since the telecast clearly shows the stadium clock at the same time as the play, his memory is doubted. Even my most fervent Wolverine friends have said allowing the additional second was a bad call.

In both cases, true huge upsets were changed by miniscule details not visible to the naked eye. You ever notice how these "surprise" calls never seem to favor underdogs? They need all the breaks they can get. Let's face it, WMU was the superior team in Ann Arbor for those three+ hours, but even with that, they could only cling to a 5-point lead with nine seconds left when these plays commenced. All of the world is stacked against these teams, and now we throw in some technology as an added hurdle. 

Hundreds of soccer games through the years have been decided even though a player may have made an imperceptible illegal touch, and few people complained, mostly because few people, including players of the opposite team, believed a touch had occurred. Just as many American football games have been decided as the clock hits zero with few people complaining, because few people believed there was time left on the clock. (I know there are some instances where these events did occur, people witnessed the discrepancy, and were corrected. The witnessing is the key.)

So, who cares, we may ask.The casual viewer cares, I would argue, more than the rabid fans.

I had no real interest in either of these games, but watch them for the drama, to see the little guy somehow overcome all the real adversity to win. College football, especially, needs these upsets, otherwise, why would any of us who don't go to the huge big four conference schools tune in? As of mid-day Sunday, the top 25 teams won their first games of the year by an average of 37 points, and this includes Michigan's pathetic 1-point non-win. Remove Michigan and these teams won by 40 points. Why bother even televising the games? Even if Michigan had lost that game, there is a better chance of them making the college football playoff than Western Michigan. (See Notre Dame's loss versus Northern Illinois, September 25, 2024, for evidence.)

I say it's time to beat the TAR (technology-assisted review) out of our Gardens of Eden.