A tale of two overtimes

On Saturday the Stanford - Oregon game went into overtime. Each team started the session with an equal shot at winning, with no advantage coming from the coin flip or anything else. And, before it even started everybody knew the game would be settled with a winner and loser, with no tie. Stanford won.

On Sunday the New York Jets - Tennessee Titans game also went into overtime. I will spare the long-winded explanation of the NFL overtime rules, other than to say that the winner of the coin toss would have won the game had it received the ball and scored a touchdown. That did not happen. Instead, the New York Jets kicked a field goal to go ahead and the Tennessee Titans had a chance to kick a field goal at the end of the ten-minute overtime period. Had Tennessee made that kick the game would have ended in a tie. Tennessee missed, so the Jets won.

Which of these two systems is better?

Long before me, someone said that a tie is like kissing your sister. I think, at the NFL level, it is probably not as good.

MLB, the NBA and NHL all have rules that have a a game end with a winner and a loser. I can’t imagine doing what the teams and players do to get to that level of play and to come away tied.

I could not understand why the NFL shortened the overtime period from fifteen minutes to ten minutes a few years ago. That would appear to make it more likely that two teams could end up tied, as almost happened yesterday.

I have said before that the NFL is too arrogant to ever acknowledge that somebody else came up with a better concept first. I think that is why the NFL won’t consider adopting the NCAA’s system or a variation of that. At the same time, the NFL did finally adopt the two point conversion long after every other football league was using it, so perhaps there is hope.

The bigger news here seems to be that the Jets won a game. That’s difficult to imagine.

However, Jacksonville is still winless. Jacksonville winning a game is even more difficult to imagine.

Blame it on the Bossa … or was it Heidi?
Forget That… Blame it on TV???

There is a new game every 3+ Hours.
Why do some second games start at 4:05 and others at 4:25.

Probably. The Jets, at least, hired a guy who most think will be a good coach.

I still haven’t seen a game this year. I’m not used to my team sucking as they have the last 5 years.

The biggest game in the world (soccer) routinely has games that end in a tie. Often a team will strategize for a tie if a player got a red card or the other team is dramatically better. Americans love a clear winner, maybe that’s why we don’t remember the Korean war fondly.

I’m okay with the NFL rules.

I think the NFL is too concerned about the over/under betting lines to adopt that system.

Yeah, they will often end in 0-0 or 1-1.