Of the 372 division 1 NCAA overtime games since 1995, the winner of the coin toss won 207 times, which means that under the NCAA system, the winner of the coin flip wins 55.65% of the time.
Greatest quote found while googling stats:
“I fucking love the NFL’s overtime format. It’s rigid and unforgiving, like my cock.”
Works for me.
I don’t think the problem is lack of fairness. It is nominally unfair to the defending team, but there are many other factors that give nominal advantages to one team or the other, so I’m not concerned about that.
My issue is that overtime football is not like regulation football, because it missed one key eliminate. Red Zone Offense. You are taking the 20 or 30 yards in which the most interesting things on the field happen, and replacing it with runs to center the ball and kneel downs. Watching teams try to set up for a field goal is much less interesting than watching them go for a TD.
My solution is simple. Keep the rules the same except for one small adjustment. First to 4 wins. If overtimes ends without anyone reaching 4 then whoever has the most would win and a tie would be a tie.
I know I’m going to be the only one who argues this, but I don’t there should be overtime, period.
I don’t see what’s so awful about a tie game, and, yes, I know I am un-American for even suggesting that. In my mind an NFL game is 60 minutes long, and if your team hasn’t done enough to win in those 60 minutes, then your team doesn’t deserve to win.
College football was fine for close to 100 years without overtime until the Big Money People behind the NCAA decided they didn’t make enough money on tie games. And I agree with Ellis Dee that it’s a horrible system, favoring the team that goes on offense second. Yes, it’s “only” by 55.5%…but keep in mind that those teams were evenly matched for 60 minutes. A 5.5% boost to the team going second is statistically significant.
But I’d go further than Ellis. He is for some reason claiming that the NFL system, in which the coin-toss winner wins 53% of the time, is fair, while the college system, in which the team on offense second wins 55% of the time, is obviously unfair. Apparently that 2% difference is enough to make college OT manifestly unfair. I don’t see it, and I think it’s more logically consistent to argue that both systems have flaws. Here’s a great way to determine which team is better: don’t play overtime, period.
I really like the 4 points to win idea.
How about playoff games?
Originally, that’s all overtime was for in the NFL. That’s how it should have remained.
I actually like this idea. Add an extra quarter for playoff games, but let regular season games end in a tie. Failing that, Hawkeyeop’s first to 4 is an intriguing idea as well.
The absolute last thing I’d want is for the NFL to adopt the NCAA’s system. I’m pretty indifferent to the current sudden death format, but I hate the college game’s OT.
No, you misunderstand my intent. Most people who want to change the overtime format cite unfairness as the reason, because the “coin toss decides the game.” The most common next step is to recommend that both teams get the ball at least once. I was attacking this argument head on by emphasizing that the two-drive-minimum approach is less fair than sudden death. The 2% isn’t a ton, but those complaining about the 3% have to back off their position in the face of 5%.
I don’t overly mind ties, so no overtime during the regular season would be fine with me. If they wanted to eliminate sudden death in the playoffs as well, I’d be fine with playing full quarters at a time, all with fourth quarter rules in effect. The game ends when a quarter ends with one team ahead of the other.
I like the current system at the best of a bad lot to pick from.
It really comes down to television which is absolute king in the NFL.
If your early game runs late, then viewers will miss the first part of a (usually) attractive late game. The broadcast rules are pretty complicated, but generally the network can’t cut away from the game in progress. So, you could be watching two 4-10 teams play in your early game who go into OT while the game with playoff implications kicks off.
The late game going into a long OT would tick off NBC since they don’t want viewers still on Fox or CBS when their coverage begins.
A 5th quarter would run on too long.
Tie games would tick off Las Vegas too much.
Ties don’t matter to Vegas; the spread is rarely PickEm, and tons of games push the spread anyway.
I appreciate you crunching the numbers – and I’m not sure I would have guessed that the college OT would put more weight on the coin toss – but I think you’re missing the point about why some people (like me) think the sudden death coin toss is unfair. Look at it this way – you said getting rid of FGs in OT would suck, because then you’d be eliminating special teams from the extra quarter (presumably you’d also get rid of punts…?). In sudden death, the offense that loses the coin toss also runs the risk of being eliminated from the extra quarter, solely because of random chance. At least in college, both offenses and both defenses get a chance to step up and show what they can do when the game is on the line.
I suppose I’d suggest the college OT scenario, except when the initially defensive team gets their chance to go on offense, they have to “mirror” what the first team did. If the first team got a TD, you can go for it on fourth down. If the first team got a 3, then you can’t go for it on fourth down. You get three downs, and then you have to try a FG. I suppose that you still have the second team shooting for the end zone more on their first three tries than they usually would, so they can get the win, but (a) it’s a more difficult play than doing what you should be doing, i.e., marching methodically down the shortened field, and (b) if you have three straight incompletions, you’ll be kicking either a 38 or 43 yard FG [I can’t remember if you start from the 20 or the 25], neither of which is a gimme in the college football game. Arbitrary and artificial? Sure. But we already make teams go for two after a TD in 3OT+, so I don’t really see how this is any more restrictive. Plus, then you get offense, defense, and special teams, and the coin toss is almost meaningless.
And now that I read it, it sounds like a messy system. Maybe the “first to score 4” isn’t a bad scenario (double safeties!)
This is wrong on so many levels. Nobody is ever awarded a win based on the coin toss. You still get to kick the ball off with a chance to pin them deep, and then you get to put your 11 defenders on the field to try and stop them. “Solely because of random chance” implies that defense isn’t a real part of a football team, and that all that matters is offense. This may or may not be what you mean, but that concept offends me on a visceral level.
This is exactly what makes it unfair. The first team didn’t go for it on fourth down; they scored a TD playing it straight. Now the second team gets an extra down because they know what they need.
That’s exactly what the big advantage in all “fair ups” schemes is: Knowledge. Because you already know exactly what the other team did or did not score, you can tailor your strategy to maximize your chances. Whomever goes first has no knowledge of what the other team will score, which puts them at a decided disadvantage. (45% to 55%)
No amount of toying with the artifical situational constraints will change the fundamental advantage, which is knowledge.
Who said that the coin toss awarded a win? I sure as hell didn’t. In fact, what I did say is – I’ll underline the part that shows that your response is putting words into my mouth (er, fingers)
I was merely trying to make a connection between a point you made – that eliminating the FG from OT is taking away special teams, which sucks – with a second point, that a coin toss might have the same effect, except with respect to a coin-flip losing offense instead of the FG unit.
You’ve snipped the context out of my words. See above. Of course a defense is a part of a football team. But so is an offense, and the fact that they might not even get to play in OT sucks. It sucks to the players, it sucks to the fans of that team, and it’s unfair to let a thin sliver of silver control that consequence.
Maximize your chances to keep pace. There’s no advantage to be gained by being required to “mirror” the team that goes first. If the first team didn’t go for it on fourth down, neither does the second, so there’s no advantage there. It’s just even – rigidly so.
And in my artificial system, while the second team has the knowledge that a TD would give them the win, they can’t do anything with that knowledge, so there’s no advantage.
Again, if you’re powerless to do anything with that knowledge, then there’s no advantage. Now, I don’t like the own system I proposed because it’s too messy, but it would definitely eliminate the advantage to playing defense first in college OT.
The coin toss often decides the winner. so
1. whats wrong with a tie game
2. Field goals start kicking from the 50 and back up 2 yards at a time. When 1 make the other misses ,game over
Did you miss the part where it was shown that the COIN TOSS OFTEN DOES NOT DECIDE THE WINNER?
Keep it the way it is. You can’t go to a college system because a) you’d have more outrageous scores like 54-53, thereby affecting the over-unders, and b) so much of the NFL’s success is based on their TV schedule. It isn’t a huge deal for a regular season game to go four hours past the expected end-time. It is more of an issue if a 1:00 Dallas/Redskins game lasts an hour extra, when my Eagles play at 4. There are plenty of Dallas fans here in Philly who just watched three hours of their team and want to see the end of the game; yet, it is Philadelphia, so the majority of the people want to see the Eagles. This is much less of an issue in the current format, where overtimes don’t usually last too long.
I prefer to keep ties. If neither team can win in regulation, then so be it. For play off games or other situations when you need to advance one team over another, use a tie-breaker other than points scored in overtime. Total yards advanced, or points scored in the fourth quarter, or fewest penalty yards, or whatever.
First to 4 is a terrific idea.
Otherwise, it’s okay to have a draw.
I also like the idea of first to 4 (or 5 or 6) from a coaching strategy point of view. It would make for some interesting situations and decisions.
But since that’s an unlikely change, I would submit another option I read once. It’s been established (in this thread, and in general) that determining first possession gives an advantage, however slight, in both the NFL or NCAA formats. The first team to possess the ball wins 53% in the NFL, the second team wins 55% in the NCAA format. Since someone gets an advantage either way, the real problem, in my opinion, is the arbitrary way in which the advantage is granted via the coin toss.
I would say keep sudden death (53% is better than 55%), but get rid of the coin toss and introduce the “Double Kickoff”. Both teams kick to their opponent. Which ever team is able to return the ball further gets to start with the ball at that location. It allows special teams to remain an important part of the game, as opposed to simply starting at some predesignated yard marker. Additionally, order of kickoff is unimportant since each team will be trying to return the kickoff as far as possible since it not only determines possession, but starting field position as well.
KICK 1: Team A kicks onside to Team B. Team A recovers.
KICK 2: Team B is now forced to kick onside and not only recover but get a better recovery yardage-wise that TEAM A got on KICK 1.
That would be fun.