Overtime Insanity

After the #1 team in the country lost to Arkansas last week, some brilliant (and by brilliant, I mean not brilliant) sportswriter opined that LSU is not worthy of a spot in the BCS title game after giving up 50 points to an unranked team. What the myopic scribe failed to mention in that lede was that 22 of the 50 points were given up in a three-round overtime procedure where even the most mediocre of teams can't help but score.

After sixty minutes of playing football on a hundred-yard field, the field suddenly shrinks to 25 yards for overtime. The winner of the game is determined not by which team is better but my which team's red zone offense is better. Punters can take the rest of the night off, kickers rarely have to try field goals more than forty yards in length, any sort of field position strategy is nullified, and teams no longer need to decide whether they want to concede a short play to cover deep in case of a long bomb. An interesting consequence is that players can use any illegal means necessary to stop the defense from returning an interception for a touchdown since the other team will start anew at the 25-yard-line anyway.

So, by distilling games down to just this one element, we end up with distorted scores and statistics (yep, they all count the same as in regulation) and less consequence that the best team won. I guess the equivalent would be starting extra innings in baseball with three men on, or deciding hockey games by one-on-one penalty shootouts (oh, wait....). Unlike overtime in the NFL, each team is indeed guaranteed a possession, but only at the expense of three-quarters of the field.

And yet, I love it. The fan in me, the one who craves excitement and suspense and the knowledge that any one play can decide a game, relishes the thought of overtime and prays that a kicker will miss his last-second 29-yard chip shot with a tie score so that I can see this wonderful, well, gimmick. He strangles the purist in me who tries to convince him that this gimmick is a perversion of the game and an unfair (at least incomplete) method to determine a winner. Maybe guaranteed excitement and non-stop offense is reason enough to justify college football overtime.