The first time that instant replay happened was on December 7, 1963. In the game, the Army trailed by fourteen points, then the Army quarterback ran into the end zone to score a touchdown. Army now was only down by six points. After Rollie Stichweh scored, Tony Verna used instant replay to show the touchdown again on National television. Then the referees called it touch down after review. This created confusion among the viewers because they thought that the Army scored twice in the matter of seconds. The fans thought that the Army had caught up to the navy. "Ladies and gentlemen, Army did not score twice," said the play-by-play announcer, Lindsey Nelson. The whole crowd was confused and excited at the same time.
The First Time Instant Replay Was Used
Army Vs Navy game, 1963, SBNation.com
Graph of percentage of plays reversed yearly, operations.nfl.com
This changed the way that the game was played because it had made it more fair calls in the game. If it looked like the call was going in one team's favor, they could replay to make it the call better or show fans that it was the right call. In the first regular season game that instant replay was used, it was used a total of 374 times. Of those 374 replays, 10% of them were reversed. In 1999 to 2015, 40% of calls were reversed, totaling a total of 2029 plays being reversed. The replayed plays averaged a time of 2 minutes and 38 seconds.