Without Ties, These Are Trying (Over)Times

In the never-ending battle to improve sports - some people thought they were pretty good in their original form - the proprietors decided a few years ago that ties were the enemy.

Not gazillion-dollar contracts.

Not expanded playoffs.

Not artificial grass.

Ties.

If they could just promise a conclusion to every contest, a winner and a loser each and every time, how much better off we’d all be.

And so they plotted to eliminate the concept that on a given day, both teams were equal, one as good as the other. The answer was overtime. Keep the players on the field until they decide the game, one way or the other.

Or until they drop trying.

The NFL went to a 15-minute extra period in 1974 and the NHL tacked on 5 extra minutes in 1983, each with mixed results.

The next OT game in the NFL will be the 12th this season and 250th since the rule went into effect. Just 13 of them ended tied, which means the league got what it was after - a winner and a loser just about every time. Often, the outcome was decided by a coin flip, with the team gaining the first possession kicking a field goal as quickly as it could. But, at least it was an outcome.

With less time to resolve the issue in the NHL, fewer issues have been resolved. Of 201 games that ended regulation tied last season, 137 remained tied after the 5-minute extra session. Of the first 46 overtime contests played this season, 30 ended the same way they began overtime - tied.

Which brings us to college football.

For a century or so, it was perfectly acceptable for games to end in ties. In fact, some of college football’s most memorable matchups have ended with neither team in front.

Try Michigan State 10, Notre Dame 10 in 1966. The Poll Bowl between the No. 1 Irish and No. 2 Spartans ended in a memorable deadlock. Notre Dame ran out the clock, preserved its ranking and went on to win the national championship.

Or Rice 14, Texas 14 in 1962. There was no explanation for this one. High and mighty Texas was No. 1 in the nation and Rice was winless in four games going in. Yet the Owls tied their in-state rivals, an enormous accomplishment for the underdogs. Force them to keep on playing and maybe they lose and the huge effort of the first 60 minutes is wasted.

Or Pitt 14, Army 14 in 1958. The Cadets were No. 1 in the nation and Pitt was a poll afterthought, unranked at 4-1. For the Panthers, the tie was almost as satisfying as a win would have been.

Or Stanford 21, Southern California 21 in 1979. This was a later version of Rice-Texas. Stanford was unranked and ordinary at 3-2 but found a way to play the Trojans dead even for four quarters. Credit geography. USC was No. 1 in the rest of the country but for one day in California, Stanford was just as good.

Years later, those ties are reduced to forgotten lines in the year-by-year records of the teams. But for the players involved, they were major, memorable affairs, made more so by the poll and the fact that the No. 1 team in the country was held to a standoff.

Not good enough.

This year, the college coaches decided to add overtime and take it a step beyond the NFL by assuring each team a possession - from the 25-yard line. You can assume there were no defensive coordinators voting for this one.

So we have had scoring fiascos like Georgia 56, Auburn 49 last weekend and California 56, Arizona 55 earlier this season. Each game went four overtimes and when they were over, the teams were exhausted and the scores resembled set-shot era basketball results.

Is this what the coaches had in mind?

The dreaded tie games have been eliminated. In their place are scoring free-for-alls that can’t be what the inventors of the game had in mind.