“All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.” — Friedrich Nietzsche.

These are wise words from an even wiser man. In this day and age, though, our senses can be leveraged and extended with the help of technology. Today, in the context of sporting events, these technologies are utilized by almost all professional leagues.

Tennis, American football, basketball, baseball — all of these sports use the either readily available video recording and motion sensor technologies in order to better aid the referees and judges in their pursuit of administering fair conduct in sport. And with most of these leagues being multi-million, and in some cases multi-billion dollar industries, the few thousand dollars they might invest in extra referees and/or technology to ensure exactness in referee calls is relatively miniscule.

Why then, as has become painfully highlighted by the 2010 World Cup Championship, has the International Federation of Association Football, or FIFA (the acronym makes sense in French), continued to strictly adhere to its policy of not using goal referees or various goal-line technologies to better promote accuracy of its calls?

Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s long-time president, has said on numerous occasions that the federation’s decision not to implement technology into the sport is due to its attempt to preserve the “universality” of the sport of association football. By “universality” FIFA means “that the game must be played in the same way no matter where you are in the world.”

This is a rather silly and arcane ideal for FIFA to attempt to adhere to. No one is calling for rules that aren’t globally uniform, simply more efficient and effective ways of determining the validity of goals. And with the numerous, and obviously wrong, calls we’ve seen already in this year’s World Cup, these demands don’t seem too unreasonable.

Yet FIFA contends “Fans love to debate any given incident in a game. It is part of the human nature of our sport.” While debating is one thing, the calls that have recently been made to the disappointment of England, Mexico, and the United States have equated not to a close call, but simply bad and inaccurate officiating.

Aside from this “universality” excuse, FIFA also points its finger at costs as a reason not to implement goal refs or equivalent technology. In a recent statement, FIFA said, “So you know, by not putting goal referees behind each net, we save upwards of $500 per game. We stand by our decision.”

Okay, $500 a game, let’s put this into context. For this 2010 World Cup FIFA has projected roughly $3.2 billion in revenues. Out of that, there are roughly $1.2 billion in costs related to operating the event. This leaves an estimated $2 billion to be retained by the Federation; and they’re worried about an extra $500?

There’s virtually no chance that FIFA would make any changes in their goal-line policies during this World Cup, and the federation has consistently voiced their dislike of video replays in order to determine goal validity. But I think it’s very plausible, especially with the numerous errors and disappointing officiating that has been witnessed this year that FIFA will seriously consider using goal judges in the 2014 World Cup.

Human goal judges help to keep this “universality” quality Mr. Blatter is attempting to preserve, and from their statement on costs of the judges, it is a fairly economical alternative to goal-line technologies. In the end, to preserve its credibility, preserve its good conscience and to be truthful, FIFA will ultimately have to come to its senses and address this situation.