In a football game, like in just about every organized athletic contest, two teams compete. To quote LSU coach Les Miles, one team finishes first and one team finishes second.
Well, most of the time.
Sunday’s Vikings-Packers game ended in a 26-26 tie.
There was no winner but there were certainly losers — namely every fan who sat in the stands at frigid Lambeau Field through five quarters of football just to head home without the closure of a result.
For 60 minutes, it was a great game. Adrian Peterson and Christian Ponder built the Vikings a 23-7 lead early in the fourth quarter before LSU-alum Matt Flynn came off the bench to lead a feverish Packers comeback, as they scored 16 unanswered points and the game went to overtime tied at 23.
Green Bay won the toss and marched down the field but was forced to settle for a short Mason Crosby field goal. The Vikings then got their chance with the ball and responded with a field goal of their own to extend the game into sudden-death.
The good news is the new overtime rules work. Overtime games are no longer decided by the coin toss, and unless one team scores a touchdown, both teams get a chance to possess the football.
It’s a fairer way to decide a football game than one team winning a coin toss, driving 40 yards and winning the game on a field goal without the other team getting a chance to respond.
From the fairness standpoint, the Packers-Vikings game reaffirmed the overtime rules work. But from the Blair Walsh field goal on, the game was just ugly. After a litany of stuffed runs, incomplete passes, penalties and punts the clock expired in a tie.
Normally ties are few and far between. But if not for a muffed punt near the end of overtime in Sunday night’s Broncos-Patriots game, there very well could have been two within twelve hours.
There is nothing in sports less satisfying than a tie. The point of competition is there is a winner and a loser. A tie feels too much like everyone getting a trophy. From a sports fan’s perspective, I’d rather see my team fight hard and finish second than flounder its way to a tie.
Ties do nothing but look ugly in the standings and leave an unfulfilling taste in the mouths of players and fans alike.
But the answer is not more overtime. Double overtime is necessary in the playoffs because someone has to advance to the next round, but it isn’t feasible for a regular season game because of television schedules and stringent regulations about what games must be shown.
College football overtime rules eliminate ties, but that completely changes how the game is played and doesn’t fit the NFL style.
The NHL eliminated the tie with the implementation of the shoot-out, but there is no football equivalent for the NFL to use.
There is no way to get rid of the tie from regular season NFL games. Ties are terrible for all involved, but unfortunately there is nothing feasible that Roger Goodell or the competition committee can do to get rid of them.
All we can do is sit back and hope the tie remains as rare a phenomenon as it is now, if not more.