If you’re a football fan, you probably know that people have been debating for years about the “best way” to have an overtime period in tied games.
The NFL uses a “sudden death” system. There is a coin toss, and the team that wins the toss almost always opts to receive the kick from the team that loses the toss. 15 minutes are put on the clock, teams are issued two timeouts, and the team that loses the coin toss kicks off to the team that won the toss. The game continues as if “fifth quarters” were a normal part of the game, except that the first team to score points in any fashion wins.
For years, people argued that this system wasn’t fair. The team that won the toss, they argued, could simply drive the ball down the field and kick a field goal to win.
For this reason, the NCAA adopted a different system for college football. In this case, there is a coin toss, and the team that wins the toss can opt to go first or second. The ball is then placed on the 20 yard line and the game clock abandoned. The team on offense can try for a first down, throw to the end zone for a touchdown, or can simply come right out and attempt a field goal. Once the offense has either scored or turned the ball over (either on downs or via turnover), the other team gets the ball at the same 20 yard line, and has to either match the first team’s score (in which case another “overtime period” is played), or exceed the first team’s score (in which case the second team wins). If the game should exceed three overtime periods, teams must attempt a two-point conversion after scoring a touchdown.
Many people, my father included, prefer the “college system” because it seems to be “fairer” to give each team a chance. And even though I personally dislike the “college system”, I always deferred to my Dad’s “fairness doctrine”, because, in my world, my dad is the All Knowing God of Sports.
But guess what? Statistics say otherwise. In the NFL, the team that wins the overtime toss wins 53% of the time. In college, the team that wins the overtime toss wins 55.65% of the time.
Now, 2 percentage points might seem to be statistically irrelevant… and usually it would be. But the fact is, the “college system” was put in place to make the coin toss less relevant, yet in reality, it actually makes it more relevant than the NFL system.
There’s also a major flaw in the NCAA system, and that’s that the team that opts to go second has a huge advantage over the team forced to go first. Consider this: Team A gets the ball first on the 20 yard line. They run three plays that get three yards each. So now it’s 4th and 1 on the 11 yard line. If they opt to go for it and turn the ball over on downs, all Team B has to do is come out and immediately kick a field goal to win the game. If Team A opts for a field goal, then Team B knows that they have to score a touchdown to win the game. Team B has the knowledge of what Team A has already done, and can adjust their offense accordingly. In other words, Team A really only has three downs in NCAA overtime, but Team B will always have four.
And the statistics back this up: teams that go first win 45% of all overtime games, while teams that go second win 55% of all overtime games. That, my friends, is a huge advantage, one that a coach would be an idiot to turn down.
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HOW DID I MISS THIS?
In the NFL, offensive “dead ball” penalties in the last two minutes of a game require a ten second runoff. For example, if a team commits a false start penalty with nine seconds left in a game, the referee will throw the flag and run ten seconds off the clock to end the game. The runoff was added to keep offenses with no timeouts remaining from committing such a penalty just to stop the clock.
Last year, the Seattle Seahawks played the St. Louis Rams in St. Louis. Seattle had the ball in the closing moments of the game with no timeouts. Seattle QB Matt Hasselbeck spiked the ball with four seconds left to stop the clock. As he did so, a flag went up. The Rams began celebrating, thinking that the Seahawks would be called for a false start – and thus, subject to a ten second runoff, ending the game in the Rams’ favor. Unfortunately, the call was for an illegal formation, which is not subject to a runoff.
So imagine this scenario: the Steelers are down by two points with nine seconds left in the game. Ben Roethlisberger hurls a pass downfield to Hines Ward. He immediately jumps up and hikes the ball to Santonio Holmes, who has lined up behind him as QB. The rest of the Steelers freeze in place as all this happens. Hines hikes the ball to Santonio… and the Steelers are penalized a mere five yards for illegal formation, with no runoff… but the penalty stops the clock, giving the Steelers time to send out the field goal unit to win the game.
And it’d all be perfectly legal, according to NFL rules.