And example would be when Ritchie Valens and Tommy Allsup flipped a coin for an airplane ride. Ritchie Valens “won” and died in the crash of that airplane on February 3, 1959. Tommy Allsup “lost” and lived until 2017.
Anything else come to mind?
Not necessarily what you were looking for, but one NFL team won the toss in overtime, deferred possession of the ball, and lost. Bears-Lions, 2002.
In the 1990 Super Bowl, Denver won the toss but lost the game by 45 points.
I could have saved Holly, Valens and Bopper. I got a call at my station in Stevens
Point, Wisconsin, from their booking agent. Did we want to book them for that night. We would have, but could find no suitable venue available. So we declined, and they went to Iowa instead. If I had worked it out, I would have no way to know how I had changed history. Maybe I did, another time and place.
Horseracing: Ogden Phipps won the coin toss and ended up with the first product of Bold Ruler and Somethingroyal in 1969, a filly called The Bride. She never won a race, but did produce some runners. Penney Chenery got the next two offspring of Bold Ruler in 1970, the first was Rising River (from Hasty Matelda), who didn’t earn a cent, and the second was Secretariat (Somethingroyal).
Ah, this brings back memories of a day exactly 37 years and three days ago…
What happened then?
Not a coin toss, but in the Aztec ball game ōllamalitzli, the winning team may have been sacrificed…
It is believed that the losing coach, or even the whole team, might be sacrificed. Some historians have disputed this - because it was an honour to be sacrificed, it may have been the winning team that lost their lives.
Wilbur and Orville Wright flipped a coin to see who got to make the first flight. Wilbur won, but had a minor crash and wasn’t successful. Orville made the second, successful flight and by losing the toss received that credit.
One time a buddy and I came across a perfectly good sandwich. We tossed a coin to see who would get to eat it. I lost the toss and he won the sandwich. He also won the tale of eating that perfectly good sandwich.
New Orleans Saints lost eleven straight coin tosses in 2011, but the team had a winning record. Imperfect memory tells me that Tulane lost every coin toss for two straight years, but I can’t find it, They probably lost every game, too.
1962 AFL Championship game, Dallas Texans vs. Houston Oilers. When it went into overtime, Abner Haynes of the Texans was instructed that if he won the toss, he’d choose the side of the field facing the clock to put the wind at their back. When he won the toss, he said, “We’ll kick to the clock.” Since he said “We’ll kick” first, it meant the other team would get the football facing the clock – exactly what the team wanted to avoid.
It would have gone down as a major mistake, except his team shut out the Oilers in the first overtime and won the game in the second (with the wind at their back). Haynes later said “I knew we’d need the wind behind us in the sixth quarter.”