The fate of instant replay in the National Football League is under review.

In Super Bowl XXII, no referees’ decisions were reversed by the replay official in the booth. A few reviews wasted time off the clock, but I needed to get extra chips and dip anyway.

I’ll assume no calls were missed since there were 18 stategically placed cameras in Jack Murphy Stadium to document every move in Washington’s romp.

Next Sunday’s Pro Bowl on ESPN likely could be the last time we watch the zebras huddle, one of them with a hand to his ear, trying to block out the crowd noise.

The NFL owners will meet in March to vote on whether to make instant replay a permanent rule change. There must be 21 “yes” votes (75 percent of 28 for non-mathematicians) to keep it from being an asterisk over the past two seasons.

The league office has shown very few calls on the field are reversed, so why not reverse the rule itself. For the record, 15 months ago I wrote the same thing in this newspaper.

But how can instant replay be put to a much better use? Let’s look at a possibly-made-up situation.

A man and a woman were arguing in a bar Monday night.

The conversation was civilized until they started discussing Super Bowls. The man, we’ll call him Clyde, claims the Bears were more dominant in SB XX than the Giants were last year or Washington was Sunday evening. Bonnie, the woman, said no team was ever as dominant as the Redskins were in the second quarter. Clyde counters by saying Washington didn’t do anything the rest of the game.

How does this argument get settled? Who is correct?

Of course, Clyde is right. You can check the videotapes and verify the Bears were the most consistently dominant team in a single Super Bowl game. This is a form of instant replay, alhough not so instant.

Now let us move into the future and see what happens to Clyde and Bonnie. We see they are compatible in a sports-related sense and they start going out and—so their parents don’t disown them for living in sin—they get married.

Married life suits them fine as they watch all the games and try to stump each other with trivia. But one day there are no games on free television and the cable is on the fritz. They decide to do chores.

As always, they make a sporting event of the chores, and Clyde wins. He finishes first and sits down to catch the sports segment of the 6 o’clock news. Bonnie finishes her chores and walks into the living room claiming victory.

“I win, Clyde. You forgot to change the kitty litter.”

“No way. It was never stated in the rules that I was to do that.”

“We agreed you were supposed to clean Tabby’s potty. That way we both had 10 chores apiece. I specifically told you that, and you agreed.”

“You’re lying. You never said that.”

How does this situation get settled? Who is right?

So many times people have arguments that there is no way to resolve because it’s one person’s word against another’s.

Instant replay would be nice if we could use it in everyday life. Everyone would carry around a portable camera and videotape their daily lives.

Instant replay can help solve these problems. While we’re at it, we should also all carry around penalty flags. That way we can throw them whenever someone bothers us and then broadcast their Social Security number over a loudspeaker.

Why should the NFL have a monopoly on these great ideas? The last time they did that, the USFL won a $3 anti-trust suit decision.

These solutions would make the world a better place to live, and give jobs to the replay officials who will be unemployed.

Simple, isn’t it?