(Editor's note: The content provided is based on opinions and/or perspective of the DallasCowboys.com editorial staff and not the Cowboys football staff or organization.)
FRISCO, Texas — Having been forced to try and process what happened in the primetime fight between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers, an instant classic that ended in the most anticlimactic fashion ever — a tie game — I'm left to channel my inner Ron Burgundy and pose one simple, yet blunt, question to the NFL.
What is this, amateur hour?!
I mean correct if I'm wrong, but it's supposed to be the opposite, yes? As in professional football, and while I'm a fan of international futbol, this isn't supposed to be that at all — so why on Earth beneath the feet of the Almighty is an American football contest perfectly fine with walking away from three-plus hours of brutalizing each other with nothing more than two participation trophies to go along with their exhaustion and bruises?
So many questions, and really only one answer that the commonfolk — you know, the ones who pay lots of their hard-earned money for tickets or who stayed awake into the late hours of the night on Sunday despite likely having work early Monday morning — won't like it at all.
"It's very important to try to look for and try to attain a three-hour window. And so it has to do with timing, it has to do with other games, and it has to do with really the structure of just how much is enough relative to timing more than anything the length of the game." - Jerry Jones to 105.3 The Fan
Ah, networks.
Now we're getting down to brass tacks, folks.
TV Schedule >>> Standings?
Explain it to me like I'm five, please.
I love lamp.
The same networks carry other major sports like baseball which, despite their questionable efforts to shorten games by using things like a ghost runner in extra innings, still refuses to allow a contest to end in a tie, even if that game goes 26 innings to determine a victor; and, yes, that's literally the record for longest MLB game in history.
And I love the premise: duke it out until the outcome falls on one side of the hyphen or the other.
"Yeah, the best description I could give you is kind of preposterous, because it's like kissing your sister. Nobody wins. It's weird. I think this is the first time I've ever tied, besides in youth soccer. Soccer has some ties. > Yeah, it's time for the league to do away with tie games. I probably could have played another one of those, you know, played another overtime and battled it out." - Jake Ferguson
I'll also argue that if another game kicks off while the previous game continues its war in overtime, networks should let the TV audience stick with the original game until it's concluded and then shift them to the other one, seeing as the latter wouldn't yet be at a point in the game where it's more important than what's occurring in the former.
They already have that edict preinstalled, mostly, for games in the noon and midday slots but, then again, they also readily deploy blackout rules that force you into the game that's just beginning — robbing you of being able to watch the outcome of the game you'd already invested more than three hours watching.
It's fine. Everything is fine.
Safety First, Sometimes
By the way, don't give me the whole spiel about player safety, considering there's a such thing as Thursday Night Football only four days after playing on Sunday, or the fact the league has teams flying to South America and Europe for games only to return home with a game to play in the next several days.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good international game as much as anyone, but my point is you can't argue player safety as a means of negating a victor when it's thrown to the wayside in other situations that serve the netw-... oh wait.
Ah, there it is, and it also explains why four 15-minute quarters are followed by a 10-minute overtime despite the game being very much on the line in that extra session, or why there are no coaches challenges allowed, despite coaches being able to challenge all the way to the two minute warning in the two previous halves.
Go figure.
Besides, even players want the tie abolished from the NFL once and for all.
"I'm unfulfilled with this — very, yeah. You don't play the game for ties. I've told you before, I don't care about the stats. I don't care about the ups and downs, the ebbs and flows that you hear about. The end result [should be a] win. When you don't get that, right now, it's tough for me. In ten years, it's the first tie I've been a part of. It's hard to kind of wrap my head around, but I know I would've felt a hell of a lot worse if it was a loss; but I'm not satisfied, not that I would be if we won. Um yeah, it's just, it's a weird feeling." - Dak Prescott
And if player safety was that much of an issue in football as it relates to the violence of a highly-legislated sport like football, then it stands to reason collegiate football would be willing to accept the same outcome, one would think.
They don't though, and won't.
Scared Money Don't Make Money
Agree or disagree with the setup of collegiate overtime all you like, but at least each team knows where they stand at the end of the game, even if it takes a second, third or subsequent overtime session to determine it — bigger rosters in the event of injury being a thing, sure, but tell me with a straight face that coaches in college are somehow less concerned with the health of their star players than that of an NFL coach.
You can't, because that's not a thing at all, and that's why collegiate stars don't get sat down in second or third overtimes in the NCAA.
So what's the answer here? There are several, actually.
"Well, just for me personally. I know for the NFL and organizations, it's a good look. But, for me, I want to win or lose — one of the two. I never really, out of all my years playing football, heard of a tie, or any of that. I don't know if that's new or something, but I don't know how to feel, bro. Next game, I guess. I mean, I think the fans, including you [the media], want to see a winner and a loser. You see what I mean? But that's up to them, honestly." - George Pickens
One solution would be to do away with the clock altogether in NFL overtime, entirely.
Borrowing a bit from the NCAA, that would allow both teams the prerequisite of one possession a piece, and if they match points and the contest has to continue, let it do so with a sudden death format from the 25-yard line, and then the 15-yard line, and then the five-yard line, and then the goal line — until someone finishes the other team off with a touchdown that, in that sudden death scenario, wouldn't allow the opposition any more opportunities to match points after said touchdown is scored.
And if you really want to make it interesting, remove the option for a field goal entirely during the initial possession and force the team that possesses the ball first to score a touchdown that must then be matched, still allowing a defensive safety or pick-six to end the game outright.
Send the kickers to the showers and put on your big britches and score the damn football.
The hell with matching field goals, especially after watching the Packers settle for a field goal and a tie instead of going for the win with one second left on the clock, and you better believe I'd be just as furious if those tables were turned and it was Schottenheimer who made that decision.
Playoff games in the NFL can't end in a tie, for obvious reasons, but games that help determine who makes the playoffs can?
I'm in a glass case of emotion, and it's so damn hot — milk was a bad choice.
