Personally I can live with the game just being a tie with no overtime at all. I also like sudden death, if you don't want the other team to score play defense--the same as if the game was tied with two minutes left. But what could work is the old CFL overtime--OT consists of two five minutes halves, played in their entirety. Each team gets the ball at least once and all three phases of the game must be played. Ten minutes is better than adding a full quarter (which would lead to more injuries) and fairer than playing five minutes which could lead to one team holding the ball (not that I would blame them for doing so). It seems to me that the game would end when the OT clock reaches zero, but I still can see the NFL doing something weird like starting 2OT and then calling the game a tie when the first play is an interception. Frankly, why is are ties so bad?
I think the main reason is that ties by their very definition leave no room for resolution, and from then on there will always doubt as to who was truly the better team on that given day. That's how I've always felt about ties, especially on the college level.
You drop $100+ for a ticket, deal with stadium traffic, sit out for hours on what cold be a hot, cold, rainy, snowy, windy day, add in how late you get home after a night game, and the best they can do is tie like in Little League except you don't get ice cream afterwards. Gee I don't know...
On the other hand, a tie is a valid result--one can win, lose or draw as they say. Ties also mean less use of annoying tiebreakers. And they mean that both teams can walk away with something--if a game is timed it seems fairly arbitrary to extend playing time and give a team the same credit for taking the lead 74 minutes after kickoff as a team that leads from the opening kickoff. The first game last year between LSU and Alabama told me that both teams were equal on that day, regardless of who won in overtime and regardless of who won the rematch in January. Of course my opinion might be shaded because I don't feel that the tiebreaker in college football is any more a test of football skill than a shootout in hockey. I've been to baseball games where after the 13th inning I have just wanted someone to win the game so I could home. Admittedly that feeling was rare and I've been to games where it was cold and raining and I didn't have a jacket but was glued to my seat in the 15th. In a similar vein, two of the most exciting cricket matches I have ever seen both ended in draws. In both matches the last day was tense, hard fought and exciting because one team was fighting not to loose while the other was fighting to close them out and win the game. I could easily imagine the same thing in football--if a tie is unsatisfying, don't let the other guy tie the score or make sure you beat the clock on that last drive. If a sport really doesn't want to have ties be a part of the equation, play to points instead of time.
5-minute overtime is essentially just the same as the original OT rules. Team to win the coinflip drives down, takes the 5 min, kicks FG to win. And they won't play a full 15 minute quarter because it messes up the TV contracts, which is pretty much the golden goose here...
I gather by your Grin smiley that you're being facetious, but a 5 minute overtime would be disastrous. The team that wins the coinflip would have better odds of winning than they currently do. Most touchdown drives (especially the ones that start a game) already take longer than 5 minutes, and its rare to see two teams score touchdowns in the first 15 minutes of a game. A better solution would be to force the teams into hurry-up offense or two-minute drill. One way of doing that would be to shorten the time on the down clock in overtime (say, 20 or 25 seconds instead of 40).
One good idea that I saw bandied about two seasons ago (when they first started discussing changing the OT rules) was eliminate the coin flip and instead make it a gambling round. Each team captain secretly conveys to the referee which yard line they would be willing to start the game from. Team A says they'll start from their own 10, and Team B says they'll start from their own 5. Give the ball to the offense of the team who said they'd start closer to their own endzone. This takes away the special teams aspect (no kickoff) but places tremendous pressure on an offense to not get sacked for a safety, and pressure on a defense to get the other team's offense off the field before they get a chance to score. The team with the bigger balls is probably also the better team. If you wanna make it fair, make the other team match your feat if you score a TD on the first drive.
Why should we not end in ties? Because football is a manly sport. In the real world, there are winners and there are losers. You don't do things hoping for a draw, you do things hoping to be the best. Soccer teams paly hoping for a tie. Football teams play for victory. As much as it pains me to do so, I feel an obligation to point out before someone gets their panties in too tight of a wad that I was kidding. Mostly. I think? I've never been a huge fan of sudden death. The "new" overtime rules are definitely an improvement and are actually pretty close to what I envisioned would be a good system: Both teams are guarenteed the ball once. If one team outscores the other team after their first set of possessions, that team wins. If they remained tied after their first possessions (whether it be that no one scored or that they scored the same amount), it then goes to sudden death. That way would add an interesting bit of strategy to it too.... if you take the ball first and score, you'll win if your defense holds them. On the other hand, if you get the ball second, you know what you have to do to win or keep the game going.... if team A didn't score, you know you only need a FG, as compared to knowing that you NEED an TD to keep overtime going.
In the real world there are also stalemates, compromises and outcomes where nobody's happy. Also, a tie could easily be a win for one of the teams, since the power difference is frequently a lot wider in soccer than in american football. Plus if you're going down that road, then soccer is a lot more cutthroat, since often a club's actual existence is on the line because of relegation. An NFL team could lose 20 games in a row and not give a shit. If a club really sucks in soccer, they are getting punished. Like, if a club in the English Premier League played like the Colts last year, what happens is that they lose their sponsorships, they lose their tv contracts, they lose most of their best players. They don't get rewarded by getting the biggest prospect in years for free.
Gives me a rather strange and non-sensical idea about OT, besides of course deciding to act like adults and agree that both teams were equal on the field that day. This comes from the Colts playing without Manning and then sucking for Luck, not so much relegation. Make both teams play OT without their starting QB. Test to see who really is the better team.
Relegation wouldn't work so well in the NFL due to only having 32 teams. In a way, we have "player relegation" with the UFL and CFL, but not with the teams. Relegation would work a lot better in college football, where there are 120 teams all trying to win the title, but only a handful of them are even realistically capable of actually winning. Instead, we have the BCS... By contrast, English Football League has over 7000 teams.
49ers Signed Brandon Jacobs this week. I'm kind of a fan of this signing. Low risk, high reward kind of deal and it sets up the 49ers to go pretty much all depth in the draft. I'm just hoping these personalities (Randy Moss, Jacobs) don't have any consequences off the field and can play well on the field. Really like what they've done in the offseason, I just hope it doesn't blow up in their face.
If Harbaugh can somehow lead Jacobs to not be a dick, I'll be ready to pronounce him some kind of wizard.
I've long wanted to divide the 120 or so college teams into six conferences of 20 teams, with any extras or any teams that move into I-A in the bottom conference. Each conference would have two divisions that would play a round robin. The two division champions would play for the "conference" title with the conference title game in the highest conference being the de jure national championship game. The lowest team each division would be demoted automatically, while the next two playoff for the other relegation spot. The top team in the 2nd-6th conferences would be promoted automatically while the teams finishing 2nd and 3rd playoff for the second promotion spot. It will never happen because it would destroy the conferences and would lead to national champions going 8-3 against equal competition instead of going 2-1 against equal competition and 10-0 against cupcakes. Not to mention all of the bowls that would go out of business.
No one wants to spend their hard earned time and money watching a draw from an American perspective. Call it cultural or whatever, be we generally want a winner and a loser. College football and the NHL came around to this idea, it's just the NFL where ties exist in major sports here. My team is gassed and trying to keep the other team out of the end zone. (I'm a Pats fan, I see this a lot.) Team X is driving, no timeouts left, converts a 3rd down to set up a FG from 48 yards away on a windy night to decide the game, the kicker lines up, and then oh well clock runs out who knows. Talk about anti-climactic.
There's also the extreme, over-the-top nature of my post that you need to watch out for. The only part of my first paragraph that really needs to be given any sort of serious consideration is the part about me not wanting ties.
I understood what you were saying, and I do understand the appeal and the intensity of matches where there has to be a winner at the end of the night (there are cup competitions like that in soccer too). I just don't need it every week. And I do think it's amusing that the business of soccer is far more capitalist and ruthless than the business of American sports; MLB comes closest, but not quite. The idea of sharing revenue, and even merchandising and ticket sales, would be completely ridiculous in European soccer for example. Even a salary cap would probably be an impossibility.
While I like pro/rel and wish that it could be made to work in the States, the NFL at least creates a playing field where more than four teams could win it. I'm not sure the NFL would be all that interesting if only Giants, Pats, Cowboys and Colts were capable of winning the title. I'd also think the NFL would go down hill real fast if the Joneses and Snyders of the league were able to spend their clubs into bankruptcy like some European soccer clubs.