Overtime needs to change

If my rants about the two-high safety or Pete Rose weren’t enough for you, you may find what you’re looking for here. I have a serious issue with how the NFL handles one aspect of the game, and this isn’t something new. The overtime rules for the most elite level of the sport are unfair, unjust, and needed to be changed yesterday.

Buffalo Bills fans, proceed with caution. Your battles against overtime rules are still fresh in your mind, I’m sure, so these next words may hurt you a little more than others.

But, there are few fan bases — if any — that haven’t been impacted by the atrocity that is the “fifth quarter” or “free football,” as those who try to make it sound fun would say. There is nothing fun, nor free, about the “extra innings” of an NFL game. Obviously some, like the Chiefs, have benefited, and others, like the Bills, have not.

While I have another soapbox to stand on about the Chiefs, I will spare you that in this column. Instead, I’ll just air my grievances about something that benefits them more than others, or so it seems. Take their Nov. 4 Monday Night Football game, in which they once again pulled out another miracle to win in overtime over the Buccaneers. Was it a miracle, or was it a stroke of luck that was decided on a coin flip?

As it sits now, until Roger Goodell inevitably reads this article and changes his mind, the first team to score a touchdown wins. It doesn’t matter if each team has a chance or not, it’s just whoever scores first wins, at least for the regular season games. A new rule has been implemented for the playoffs, which helps correct this, and that came on the heels of the Bills’ overtime loss to the Chiefs two years ago.

Kansas City even won the Super Bowl this year in overtime. However, San Francisco had the ball first, and failed to score a touchdown, so that was their own doing and not necessarily a flaw with the system in place.

But, let’s say that is a regular season game, and they score a touchdown on the first drive of overtime. Kansas City doesn’t even get a chance to make a drive of their own and possibly the two-point conversion to win them the game. How, in anyone’s right mind, is this not a flawed system? Overtime can — and often does — come down to a coin flip. At the beginning of overtime, the team captains meet at midfield and do a coin toss, just like at the beginning of the game. If your team calls it wrong, or their team calls it right, that could easily seal the game for your opponent.

Or, if the referee hears the call wrong, like in the case of the Steelers’ Thanksgiving game against Detroit in 1998, it comes down to another person not recognizing what you said. As the game was tied at the end of regulation, Jerome Bettis of the Steelers, was the captain in front of his hometown crowd as the representative for the visiting team. Because they were the visitors, the Steelers got to call the coin flip, and Bettis very clearly called ‘tails,’ but the head referee announced that he had called ‘heads.’ This upset Bettis, because the coin landed tails-side-up, which gave the Lions the ball.

Overtime rules were different then, so whoever scored first — by way of a touchdown, field goal, or safety — was the winner. The Lions went on to win by a field goal, because they were the first ones to score in overtime, and Pittsburgh truly had no chance to win the game.

Things are different now, though, as overtime isn’t quite as sudden-death. If the team that receives the ball at the beginning of the extra period only kicks a field goal, their opponent has the chance to score. The next score — not just touchdown — wins the game, as we saw in Sunday’s Giants-Panthers game in Germany. With things knotted at 17 at the end of regulation, the teams headed into the extra period trying to grab an overseas win. The Giants fumbled the ball on their first possession, and the Panthers took over deep in NY territory, which set them up for the game-winning field goal.

But, that still doesn’t fix what’s wrong with the overtime rules.

I am a really big fan of how college football does it. Each team has a chance with the ball at their opponent’s 25-yard line. If both you and your opponent score the same amount of points, the game moves to a second overtime period. Now, when a team scores a touchdown, they must attempt a two-point conversion instead of kicking the extra point. If things are still tied after this, the third overtime period sees both teams trading two-point conversion attempts to declare a winner. No ties can be had in college football, and each team is given a fair opportunity to score.

I’m not perfect, nor do I claim to be, but I’d like to think I’m not the only one who sees an issue with how the NFL operates their overtime periods. I certainly don’t have the perfect fix for things, but I believe college football does it the best.