Kissing Your Sister

They say a game that ends in a tie has been like kissing your sister. That, and the impetus of a lot of money in TV commercial revenue, has led the NFL and NCAA to devise tie-breaking procedures for football games. Now, you've got to ignore the fact that you've already got a game designed with varying point values for a range of scoring options such as touchdowns, one or two point tries, field goals and safeties to minimize the probability of ties. But they happen.

So, college created an arcane system of "innings" in which each team will get the ball, first and ten, from the twenty-five yard line and attempt to score. Whoever leads at the end of an inning wins. If still tied, another inning is played.

The pros opted for an additional sudden-death period. First possession, just like at the start of the game is determined by a coin toss. Unfortunately the advent of the 60 yard field goal kicker has meant that 60% of first possession teams win in overtime. So, the sister kiss is resolved by a visit to a hooker for a sure thing.

The NFL will decide this week, apparently on a revision to the process. Now, they propose that if first possession in over-time results in touchdown, the team wins, but if only a field goal results the play will continue. In a further convolution of reason they are proposing that this apply ONLY to play-off games, not regular season contests.

Stop them before they kill again!

There is nothing wrong with a tie. Ties happen.

But consider the impact of eliminating tie-breaker play. If there were no over-time possibility would we still have the last minute drive to field goal position followed with that boring series of "icing the kicker" time-outs? Or would coaches play first for a win and only as a last resort go for the lesser evil of accepting a tie?

I'm thinking it would return a lot of excitement to the game. Of course the game is secondary to the revenue and that's a shame. The emphasis on coaches' decisions in that tie game scenario is reminiscent to me of the argument against the designated hitter in baseball. When you remove the gorilla who is too muscled up to actually play the game from the line-up, the manager's choices with regard to pitching, running, base-stealing and inning-by-inning planning get a lot more complicated. Mind-games, however, don't satisfy the majority of American mouth-breathers in sports bars across America. Too bad.