NFL Overtimes Not Ending On First Possession, Still Perfectly Unfair

Yahoo’s Chris Chase tweets an eye-opening stat: none of the six NFL games that have gone to overtime this season have ended on the first possession. Chase also tweets, “Remember that after everyone complains first time it happens.” I will! And I will also remember that the mere fact that six games have gone beyond one possession in overtime doesn’t make the NFL’s current rules fair.

There’s no way to equalize the probability both teams have to win in overtime, but that’s an impossibility: teams never have equal probabilities to win games, except on the rudimentary “Will this team win or lose or tie?” scale. The problem with the NFL’s overtime rules, though, is that they don’t guarantee both teams equal opportunity to win the game, just equal opportunity to win a coin flip. They guarantee one team the opportunity to try to win after kicking off, and one team the opportunity to try to win after receiving.

This makes some people who care about fairness upset! That should come as no surprise. There are people who think it’s just fine! That’s no shock, either. What to do about it? I vote argue.

There’s no silver bullet fix for the NFL’s system, because the NFL enjoys having sudden death overtimes, and the college-style overtime system is often dismissed as gimmicky. I’m not even particularly sure that it’s a system that needs to be fixed; the NFL seems to be doing just fine despite an unfair overtime system, and its changes to playoff overtime seem to be modifications of the existing system rather than wholesale changes, which I interpret as a commitment to the way things are.

But the people whining about unfairness have a valid point (“This is inherently unfair!”), just as those who are fine with the system (“It seems to work, y’know, and no one said it had to be fair”) have one. Add the passion that sports fans have about their pastimes and teams, and you have the perfect recipe for a spirited argument. And there’s nothing wrong with having it.