The National Football League made an interesting, and proper, decision this week. They decided that for this season’s playoffs, at least, the team that won that won the coin toss wasn’t necessarily going to have the advantage over the team that didn’t.
And while the coin-toss winner will continue to have an advantage in one sense, when it comes to the post-season, the coin-toss winner can’t get away with having a great field goal kicker and little else.
By a vote of 28-4 (who voted against this?), the league decided to give both teams a chance to score in overtime so long as the team that won the coin toss didn’t score a touchdown. In other words, if the team that got the ball first in OT went down and kicked a field goal, the other team got a shot at tying the game or winning it with a touchdown of their own.
That’s the way the rule should always have been. As we said on 92-CITI-FM this morning, “the CFL doesn’t do a whole lot of things better than the NFL, but one thing it does do considerably better is conduct its overtime.” At least the CFL’s overtime system is fair. Both teams get the ball at least once, both teams have a fair chance to get their offences on the field.
For years — this regular season included — the lucky NFL team has won far more often than it should. It sure doesn’t take any skill to win a coin toss. At least, when this year’s playoffs roll around, both teams will get a fairer, if not a completely fair, shake and that’s a step in the right direction.
In fact, it’s probably the best decision made by the NFL’s competition committee since the day they decided to move the uprights to the back of the end zone.