Some football talk

Some football talk

While I was in Maine visiting my Mom this weekend, I heard a local sports radio station promo in which some talk-show host was promoting his idea for fixing NFL overtime. Now, you may be thinking, “Fix it? What’s wrong with it?” I’m sympathetic to the idea. But if you’re thinking “NFL overtime? Who cares about football?”, well, you can go read someone else’s blog.

Anyway, the riff on the current overtime rules is that the random coin flip makes no sense since most times the winner of the coin flip scores first and the outcome is determined by chance. This talk-show guy proposed that the team that has the ball at the end of regulation should continue to have it first in overtime. But that would be terrible! In that case, there’s no incentive for them to try to score before the end of regulation, no hurry-up offense, no impending disaster as they try to hurry the ball down the field for the last-second field goal attempt. Instead, the cautious coach will just sit on the ball, run out the clock, and start fresh in overtime.

What I think they should do is give the ball to the team that did not have possession at the end of regulation. That way it would give the team with possession during the last two minutes an extra incentive to score and would make it all the more exciting. Of course, the downside is that the defense would have less incentive to cause a turnover, although a turnover with 45 second to go in regulation might still be good because then they get a chance to score before the clock runs out. I think my idea has merit. What do you think?

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