The top story in Week 8 of college football was the huge upset that Illinois pulled off over Penn State, by a score of 20-18, in nonuple overtime — that means after nine overtimes, for those of you in Rio Linda, West Palm Beach and Staten Island.
After the game was tied 10-10 at the end of regulation, still tied, 13-13, after the first overtime, and 16-16 after the second overtime, it was "Dueling Two-Point Conversion Attempts" (not to be confused with the "Dueling Banjos" featured in the 1972 movie "Deliverance") until one team made a two-point conversion attempt while the other team didn't.
After both teams missed five times in a row, and both teams made it the sixth time around, the Fighting Illini (whose name is no doubt in the cross-hairs of the "woke" element — the NCAA has already banned Chief Illiniwek, their mascot) made their two-point conversion attempt in the seventh two-point duel but the Nittany Lions did not, giving Illinois an improbable 20-18 victory (Penn State was a staggering 24-point favorite).
Starting this year, the NCAA has tweaked the overtime format by requiring a team scoring a touchdown in the second overtime to go for two (in the first overtime, either team scoring a touchdown has the option of either kicking a PAT or going for two).
Yet the suits at the NCAA completely overlooked the main problem in its overtime format — and that is where each team starts their possessions in the first two overtimes.
Ever since 1996, when overtime in college football was implemented, each team has started their possessions at the other team's 25-yard line — making it relatively rare for a team not to come away with at least a field goal, as the aforementioned game should make clear.
But if the ball was placed at the 50-yard line instead, far more overtime games would be settled after just one overtime, due to one team having been held scoreless while the other team managed at least a field goal — and a very high percentage of games that did not get decided after the first overtime would be decided after the second overtime.
Furthermore, with the ball placed at the 50-yard line, if the defense comes up with a turnover in overtime and returns it inside the 50-yard line (without scoring a touchdown, as the present overtime rules allow), they can be made to take possession there instead of at the 50-yard line, making a quick settlement of things that much more likely.
(Another rule that can be adopted is if a team is pushed back inside their own 30- or 35-yard line in overtime, due to penalties, sacks, etc., it is a safety, and the game ends right then and there.)
And finally, as someone no less manly than John Madden once observed, what's wrong with a tie — especially with the new playoff format, once it comes online so to speak, that will send 12 teams to the national championship playoffs; i.e., the Dirty Dozen?
Allowing games to end in a tie would make the teams much easier to rank: if, among three teams, of which one team had one loss, another team had a loss and a tie, while a third team had two losses (and now it is entirely possible for a two-loss team to make the field, when it never was before), the three teams become a lot easier to separate, because in that case the difference among the three teams is right out in front where everyone can see it, "strength of schedule" being an inexact science at best.
A 10- or 15-minute clock can be made to run during the overtime, and if the game is still tied after the 10 or 15 minutes, irrespective of the number of possessions that each team has had in the overtime at that juncture, that's the way the game ends — but with each team starting their possessions at the 50-yard line, the vast majority of games will end before the 10 or 15 minutes run out (there would be no clock in the national championship tournament or the lesser bowl games).
Either that, or if a game is still tied after two overtimes (during the regular season only), the game ends in a tie.
Nine overtimes are ridiculous. Two overtimes are more than enough.
And not for nothing, but is it wise to force student-athletes, nine out of 10 of whom cannot be trusted to drink or even smoke, to play a grueling game that can theoretically go on forever?
One does not have to be a "pablum-puking liberal," as the late Morton Downey, Jr. delighted in saying, to believe that the answer is a most emphatic "no."
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