A few years ago, the subject of changing the overtime rules came up in the Competition Committee, and it was shot down.  Here’s what Bill Polian had to say about the current overtime rules:

“The current system presents a tremendous reward or risk. That’s something that adds a lot of excitement to the game.”

Bill Polian’s a smart guy.  He drafts good players.  He convinced the NFL to change the rules on pass interference so that this team could win the Super Bowl.  So it makes me wonder why he’d say something of such abject stupidity.

NFL overtime is easily the most boring of the three major American sports, because sudden death only makes sense when possession is fluid and scoring is difficult.  That’s why it works in soccer, and that’s why it works in hockey.  That’s also why it doesn’t work in baseball or basketball.

Imagine if basketball changed its overtime rules.  Imagine that a coin flip determined which team got to take the ball out-of-bounds to start the period.  The first team to score in any way, even on a free throw, would automatically win the game.  That free throw would probably be pretty damned exciting, but it would leave a really sour taste in the mouths of both team’s fans, because that’s not the way to decide who wins a basketball game.

The NFL works the same way.  Earlier this season, the Jets and Patriots slugged it out for sixty full minutes.  The Jets stormed ahead early.  The Patriots battled back and tied it.  Again the Jets jumped ahead, and tried to run the clock out, but the Patriots held on defense, got the ball back with just over a minute left, and then scored with one second left, as Matt Cassel hit a falling Randy Moss on the sideline of the end zone, and the ensuing extra point tied the game and sent it to overtime.  From the start of regulation to the end of regulation, the game was exciting.

In the overtime, the Jets won the coin toss, played ball control, opting for runs and safe, short passes downfield, got into field goal range, ran the ball up the middle until they fourth down, then asked Jay Feely to kick a chip-shot field goal to win it for them.  Boring. If you were a Patriots fan, all you could hope for was a fumble at some point, or a shank on the field goal.  But more importantly, if you were a Jets fan, you were excited that the Jets won, but you couldn’t be excited about the way that they won it.

This past week saw a playoff game decided by a coin flip.  Costly turnovers found the Chargers behind late, but good defense and an outstanding performance by their punter kept them close enough to tie the game with a late field goal and set up sudden death overtime.  The Chargers won the coin toss, started at their own 25, and completed a drive that ended in a Darren Sproles touchdown, and included 25 yards of Colts penalties.  That’s right, without any help, the Chargers were given half the length of the field for position, which meant they only had to gain twenty yards on their own to be in field goal range.  It just so happens that Sproles busted a long run to end the game.

Tony Dungy has been a proponent of the sudden death system, claiming that if you lose the coin toss, you still get a chance to get the ball back by playing good defense.  And that’s true.  You get the ball back if you play good defense.  But for whatever reason, nobody does.

To this point in the NFL season, there have been fifteen overtime games that did not end in a tie (the now-infamous Philadelphia-Cincinnati game).  The team that won the coin toss won the game eleven out of fifteen times (73%).  Eight out of fifteen times (53%), the team that lost the coin toss never had an offensive possession.  Think about that.  More than half the time you lose the coin toss, you never even have a chance to score, and your odds of winning are about 1-in-4.  How is this fair to anyone?

It’s clearly unfair to the team that loses the flip.  You could argue that it’s also unfair to the team that wins the flip, because they have to hear about how they won because of the flip.  And it’s unfair to the fans when twelve of the fifteen games ends in a field goal.  Fans pay to see football games decided by football, not by coin flips.