We’re getting closer and closer to determining the National Champion for the 2011 college football season and many are still talking about how they don’t want to see a LSU and Alabama rematch. A rematch for the National Championship could be pretty boring but Alabama deserves to be in the game. Alabama played better than LSU most of the game but gave up the victory in overtime when LSU was given the ball at the 25-yard line instead of the Tigers creating their own winning drive against the Crimson Tide.
It very well could be Bama that is 13-0 right now, although that wouldn’t ensure there would be no rematch because LSU could be the team that is 11-1 and ranked second. Anyway, the point is college football’s overtime rules are possibly even worse than the BCS. So how do you fix the overtime rules?
I’ve heard that many like the NFL’s regular season system better. The NFL implements a sudden death overtime during the regular season. The first team that scores in the overtime frame wins the game no matter if that score is touchdown, field goal or safety.
The knock on this system is that the team with the ball first would only need to get into field goal range and kick a field goal to end the game meaning the game basically came down to which team won the overtime coin toss, which is determined by luck. I agree with this criticism. I know there have been studies to determine how often an overtime game in the NFL actually ends with a field goal in the first possession and the percentage is pretty low. That doesn’t matter though. Even if a team scored on their first possession just one time out of one hundred college football games if that one game was a game as important as LSU-Alabama then the system fails.
The NFL has also implemented new overtime rules for the playoffs. If the team with the ball first scores a touchdown then the game is over. If the team with the ball first scores a field goal then the second team has a chance to answer. Scoring a field goal will continue the game, scoring a touchdown or not scoring will result in the game being over.
This system is convoluted and really kind of dumb. Why does a touchdown end the game suddenly and a field goal doesn’t? I know that a touchdown is worth more points but why doesn’t the other team get to try and score a touchdown? That would be a better system. It would essentially be like college football’s current system where both teams get a chance to score, except they’d have to kick off like they normally do rather than automatically receive the ball at the 25-yard line. This system would be better than the current college football system or sudden death overtime and it would be much better than the NFL’s silly playoff overtime rules.
There is a better overtime system though and it’s pretty simple. College football should just play an extra quarter. If the score is tied at the end of regulation then play another 15 minutes. I don’t have any statistical proof to back this up but I bet after another 15 minutes there are pretty good odds that the score will not be tied anymore. I know that one of the concerns of college football is that these football players are very young men and don’t need to be pushed too hard. So make the overtime period 10 minutes or even 8 minutes. I don’t see how this is necessarily any worse than an overtime system where you could go back and forth for 10, 16, 20 possessions or more until the game is decided.
This overtime system makes the most sense for two reasons. The first is that this is how most sports work. I’m not saying that every rule that other sports have necessarily works for college football. I wouldn’t go and implement a 68-team tournament in college football just because it works in college basketball but when this overtime system is used by most other sports then it seems like a pretty solid way to decide a tied game.
The second reason it makes sense is because the rules don’t suddenly change in the overtime period. The strategy doesn’t change that much and the players don’t have to change that much. By simply adding an overtime period it’s more of the same football we are used to. How is that a bad thing?
Sources:
College Football Rules, NCAA.org
Lee Andrew Henderson has lived for more than 30 years in the state of Alabama. Surrounded by Alabama andAuburn fans he is constantly immersed with the team schools, the rivalry, the SEC and college football in general. Lee Andrew Henderson can be found on Twitter @LeeAHenderson
