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?
I had thought of your scenario and perhaps they could make some rule about the team that if the ball changes hands some seconds before the end of regulation then it stays with the team with it last or something.
Yes, it quickly gets messy. The problem with college overtime is that you don’t have sudden death anymore and the potential for a lot of tie games in the standings. Or do I have college overtime wrong?
Dom,
IMHO, the best solution is to eliminate overtime play. Games then could be won, lost, or tied. In the event of championship games, this would mean that we’d see co-champions sometimes.
Dom:
“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. “
Huh???
I’d rather see OT eliminated altogether than to go with Dom’s idea. That way, maybe the team in possession—which it EARNED—might not win, but at least it would BE the team in possession at the end of the game.
Not being in Maine, I didn’t hear the sportscaster/commentary guy but what the heck is wrong with the coin toss?
It’s not just the sportcasters in Maine, but a lot of people connected to football have been complaining that the current system—seeing as how the team that wins the toss wins two-thirds of the time—leaves the winner up to chance.
I would prefer the system to stay the way it is, but if you’re going to change it, then at least make it competitive.
I didn’t know—and still don’t know—that the coin toss winners win the game 2/3s of the time. Somehow I thought it was about half. I’m lousy at stats.
Still, I don’t like the proposal. I’d rather see a tie game (and I hate tie games).
While I think the current OT situation is not bad enough to warrant radical change, what if you eliminated the possibility of a field goal in OT? What if you required the teams to score a touchdown in order to win?
re: mark,
“If the NFC championship game ends in a tie, who plays in the SuperBowl?”
There are several ways that this could be determined: simply flipping a coin, looking back at the won-loss records of the teams involved in the tie, etc.
I still hold to the idea that OT is a bad thing in and of itself, and should be eliminated across the board.